10 Gangster Movies That Mess With Your Brain
3. Mad Dog Time (1996)
A personal favourite, this - also known as Trigger Happy and directed by Larry Bishop, the son of Joey Bishop of the Rat Pack, Mad Dog Times story takes place in a Vegas-style underworld of nightclubs and casinos.
Mickey Holliday is the absentee boss Vic's enforcer and unofficial hitman, while Brass Balls Ben London has been running the racket without him. You see, Vic's about to be released from a mental institution. A rival boss is set to try a hostile takeover, and sends his enforcers to challenge Holliday. They fail, because Mickey is a badass, and because this film sets up duels between mob hitmen where they sit behind ornate desks facing each other. You know, like Edwardian gentlemen used to do it.
There are power plays and general skulduggery - Holliday has been sleeping with his boss mistress (and her sister) while Vic's been indisposed, while London is only trying to take over his business - but it's these weird little touches that make Mad Dog Time such a peculiar pleasure to watch. That, and the cast (thats Billy Idol and Gregory Hines with Kyle MacLachlan and Jeff Goldblum in the above clip), which rivals most Robert Altman flicks and the fact that the whole thing apparently takes place in Vic's head.
Yes, this strange, strange film may well be entirely taking place in the addled brainpan of Richard Dreyfuss mob boss, a reality the film keeps alluding to with frequent close-ups of Vics eye, before going all out right at the end to zoom in through the iris, showing a kaleidoscopic starscape with Sinatra playing in the background.
Does that mean each of the characters represents a part of Vics tortured psyche? Is he making up the whole gentlemans duel thing too? Who knows.