The Family (2013)

We laughed watching this farce about a Brooklyn Mafia family acting up in witness protection in a French village, but I started checking my watch in the third act. I was more disappointed than Jack at the squandering of Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Tommy Lee Jones by director/co-writer Luc Besson (Léon: The Professional (AKA The Professional - 1994) (it was then-13 year old Natalie Portman's feature debut) and The Fifth Element (1997) were spectacular action pictures--I've seen no others, not La Femme Nikita (1990) nor the two Taken movies (2008 and 2012), which he co-wrote).

My favorite moment in the trailer is when Pfeiffer (last blogged in People Like Us) actually flinches at the explosion behind her, breaking my newest rule. But for most of the movie, she and De Niro (most recently in The Silver Linings Playbook) pretty much phone in impressions of their other mob roles. Jones (last in Lincoln) does the same as the patient CIA operative pleading with them not to blow their cover. The teenage kids, played by Dianna Agron (Glee, Burlesque) and John D'Leo (he was in The Wrestler and Wanderlust, among others, in parts too small to mention) have some good bits with rage and deviousness, respectively. You might recognize some of the actors playing their fellow mob men.

Besson and Michael Caleo (he wrote one other script which I didn't see) based their screenplay on the novel Malavita (often translated as Badfellas) by Tonino Benacquista, himself a scriptwriter (co-wrote Read My Lips (Sure mes lèvres - 2001), a wonderful thriller about a deaf woman pulled into crime). Martin Scorsese is one of the producers of The Family and, at one point, De Niro and Jones watch Goodfellas (1990).

The soundtrack includes 20 songs and an original score by Evgueni and Sacha Galperine, clips of which can be previewed on the album's amazon page. The brothers' website has longer clips, more interesting than the clips on amazon.

We saw this its opening weekend, in mid-September, and it's now thirteenth at the box office, despite averaging 33% critics and 47 audiences on rottentomatoes. I suggest waiting for it to air on free cable.