Music N' More: Mickey Blue Eyes

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Mickey Blue Eyes

-1999 film directed by Kelly Makin.
-Hugh Grant stars as an English auctioneer named Michael Felgate who becomes involved in his soon to be father in law's Mafia world. Several of the actors in the movie are featured as cast members on The Sopranos

Did You Know?
-When Vincent Pastore showed up late one day, Caan asked angrily why. Pastore realized another film he was doing ran late, and when Caan realized he was doing 2 films at once, he backed off.
-The theme music is recycled from the 1990s British TV show Jeeves and Wooster
-In the movie, James Caan nicknamed Hugh Grant "Whippy", after the Whippet, an English breed of dog that is small and shivers a lot.
-More than half of the cast also appears on the Sopranos.

Plot
-Michael Felgate(Hugh Grant) is a British auctioneer who proposes to his girlfriend Gina Vitale(Jeanne Tripplehorn), and he is shocked when she turns him down. Gina later explains that her father Frank(James Caan) and most of her cousins and uncles are gangsters involved in a Mafia family. She is worried that he'll become involved, and he does. He manages to get involved in a money laundering scheme that has the FBI looking his way.

-When one of the money laundering scams at Michael's auction house goes awry, Gina's cousin Johnny(John Ventimiglia) confronts and assaults Michael. Gina fires a warning shot into the ceiling which ricochets and kills Johnny. When his father Vito finds out, he tells Frank he will kill Gina unless Frank kills Michael during his wedding speech. Unable to carry this out, Frank confesses what Vito has ordered him to do and Michael and the two of them turn to the FBI for help. They set up an operation in which Michael's murder is faked at the wedding reception. He is given a recording device and is given the job of trying to record Vito into admitting his activity on tape before he is "killed".

-Michael's plan fails, and when Vito realizes that his murder is a fake, he orders Vinnie(Joe Viterelli) to kill Michael. Vinnie shoots Gina in what looks like an accident. Vito is arrested for ordering the murder of Michael. As Frank and Michael mourn Gina's "death" in the back of the ambulance, her death was faked. Vinnie and Gina were involved in the FBI sting. The film's title comes from Michael being forced to impersonate a gangster, who Frank kindly nicknames "Kansas City Little Mickey Blue Eyes." And towards the end of the film, Frank is trying to show Michael the ropes of being a gangster, which is hard for Michael, because he has an English accent and Frank is showing him how to say things like "Forget about it."