Although he’s not always easy to pin down across his oeuvre, Jonathan Demme’s collaboration with Tak Fujimoto in Married to the Mob elicits a visual style that can most easily be married with their work together in Something Wild. It feels free and easy yet still deeply empathetic through those trademark POV close-ups. In fact, it takes the gangster motif of Ray Liotta from the previous film a bit further.

One of the virtues of Married to the Mob is how it never takes itself too seriously, and it’s this awareness that makes it a pleasure to be a part of. Demme had some kinship with Martin Scorsese, and it’s like he’s readily exploring the other director’s usual milieu without totally giving himself over to the gratuitous nature of it all. Despite an opening hit on a train, plenty of gunplay, and the general immersion in the mob world, he’s not going to fully succumb to it.

Scorsese is fascinated by the dichotomy of the sacred and profane he found in his own boyhood community. However, Demme’s not about to make Mean Streets or even Goodfellas. Instead, he focuses his energies on someone who, in the predominantly patriarchal world, would normally be pushed to the periphery. It seems entirely fitting that he would focus on a mob wife (Michelle Pfeiffer), married into the organization while growing increasingly disillusioned with the lifestyle.

Her husband is one of the local kingpin’s cronies. Their son has been conning all the local kids in their affluent neighborhood out of their pocket change. There are firearms in the junk drawer, and furniture purloined from who knows where. Her husband’s satisfied with the bottom line. She has a conscience and desires a better life for her boy. It all goes back to the influence of one man: His name is Tony the Tiger.

Dean Stockwell, the journeyman who began as a child actor in Classic Hollywood and then famously ran in circles with Dennis Hopper during the counterculture era, left the industry behind only to come back quite spectacularly.

Paris, Texas, Blue Velvet, and even Quantum Leap are hard to forget, and yet, added to the list, you must include Tony the Tiger in Married to The Mob. He’s having so much fun relishing the part of a heavy, and it radiates out of him.

There’s hardly a need to go into the particulars because we’re all familiar with the archetype, and yet when he finally shows up in the movie, there’s something inimitable about him. It’s not what he is but how he does it that matters most.

He has a weakness for pretty girls. He’ll even kill for them, going so far as to knock off a rival. He’s ruthless, and in the same breath, he has a certain moral code of conduct. He believes in family and taking care of those who are loyal to him. Perhaps even those whom he’s hurt. After Angela’s husband is killed, he vows to take care of the man’s grieving widow, although his reach is a bit more hands-on than she would like.

When she gets up and leaves her present life behind, selling all their worldly possessions, and relocating her son to a much humbler neighborhood, it gives the movie something more. This is where it becomes a hybrid rom-com, and Matthew Modine and Michelle Pfeiffer stir up their chemistry.

They meet in an elevator in a grungy apartment building. He’s keeping surveillance on her, and she’s trying to get away from the mob. This is the subtext. She has the forthright honesty to ask him out on a date, and he accepts. It’s easy to suspect his motives, and yet there’s a sense he’s game and obviously smitten once he gets to know her.

This isn’t a rehash of Notorious, where the agent falls in love with the girl even as he belittles her reputation. It’s a lot more innocent and humane than that (although they are still bugging her apartment). We know he must fess up eventually.

Of course, it must hit some inflection point in their relationship. His superior gets involved, she finds out who he really is, and Tony is on the run after an attempt on his life. He carts Angela off to Miami for a weekend as he does his best to dodge his own jealous wife.

Everything must inevitably go wrong for him, but thankfully, it’s just as much about the comedy as it is hammering home the crime drama. Demme never allows us to lose affection for any of these characters, really.

If there’s any mild complaint, it’s only that the movie resolves itself quite easily. But again, it’s not looking to be The Departed. This point of view is not of interest, and so in its send-up, we get something that’s tonally so different and rather endearing.

With each subsequent film I watch of Demme, I’ve been increasingly smitten. Because you start with something like Silence of The Lambs only to feel out the rest of his filmography to find so many countless gems. These are movies with eccentricities, comic verve, wildly phenomenal soundtracks, and an eye for characters (and actors) who would often be disregarded by other directors. Michelle Pfeiffer’s Angela and then Dean Stockwell feel like a case and point in this movie.

4/5 Stars