Mikey and Nicky: Cassavetes Directs a Gangster Night

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000

There is a whole subgenre of the American crime film that has almost nothing to do with crime. The robbery is offscreen or already over; the money is gone or never mattered; what fills the frame is two men talking, circling, lying to each other about things that stopped being negotiable years ago. Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky (1976) is the purest example anyone has managed, and for decades it was also the hardest to see. It sat in a vault, sued over, recut, misunderstood, until a restoration finally let people watch the thing May actually shot. What they found was a gangster picture with the manners of a marriage counselling session and the pulse of a horror film.

Character Study - vo.rs

Mikey and Nicky: Cassavetes Directs a Gangster Night