Vincent D'Onofrio – The Magnificent 60s

Harlem gangster kingpin Bumpy Johnson barely lasted five minutes of Ridley Scott’s masterpiece American Gangster (2007), just long enough to show the various elements of his complex character, his ruthlessness, his generosity and his awareness of a fast-changing world. To compensate, here’s a television mini-series devoted to his life, that, like the Scott epic, spreads out beyond mere shooting and killing and takes in endemic racism and politics.

As well as Johnson (Forest Whitaker) various real-life characters are knitted into the fabric: firebrand Malcolm X (Nigel Thatch), Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr (Giancarlo Esposito), Mafia bosses Vincent ‘Chin’ Gigante (Vincent D’Onofrio) and Frank Costello (Paul Sorvino), boxer Cassius Clay/Mohammed Ali (Deric Augustine), another Mafia thug Joey ‘Bananas’ Bonnano (Chazz Palminteri), heiress Amy Vanderbilt (Joanne Kelly) and Mafia snitch Joseph Valachi (Richard Petrocelli) – subject of an entire film The Valachi Papers (1972) played by Charles Bronson.

Initially, I had been less keen on this tale and was on the point of giving up after a couple of episodes, but it proved a slow-burn and once the narrative extended out into the wider world of politics I was hooked.

The story begins in 1963 with Bumpy Johnson released from Alcatraz after a ten-year stretch and trying to recover his power base in Harlem which has been encroached upon by Vincent Gigante who shows little sign of letting go. At its heart, traditionally, this would focus on the battle between Bumpy and Gigante over who controls Harlem, both restrained from all-out war by dictate of the Five Families who rule Mafia New York.

But it’s the narrative tentacles that soon take over. Bumpy, intending to go straight romantically-speaking and not play around any more, rebuffs former lover Amy Vanderbilt, even to the extent of turning down the $300,000 loan he requires for survival if it means dropping his pants for her. Ironically, though his wife Mayme (Ilfenesh Hadera), while playing the jealousy card and appearing to do her sexy best to keep him interested solely in her, is actually enjoying an affair with a young boxer.

Powell, desperate for headlines, makes the case that the cops are always pulling in Black gangsters over the numbers racket while ignoring all the Italians involved in the same illegal activity. Malcolm X, Bumpy’s longtime buddy, is planning to overthrow the pacific nature of the Islamic cause and turn it into a violent representation of the Civil Rights cause.

Even Black recording studios refuse to produce civil rights records in case it brings down the wrath of the ruling White community.

*Not to be confused with this 1973 Blaxploitation number which started life as ‘Black Caesar’ until some clever clogs thought to take advantage of ‘The Godfather’ boom.*

And just to add some more spark to this tinderbox, Bumpy’s daughter Elise (Antoinette Crowe-Legacy) is a heroin addict who, in her recovery, begins working for Malcolm X, though she’s not above snitching on him to the leader of the Islamic movement. Gigante’s daughter Stella (Lucy Fry) has taken as a lover Black musician Teddy Greene (Kelvin Harrison Jr), an arrangement that infuriates her father to the extent that he plans to rub out Teddy. Though, if he just let matters play out, he could rely on the cops to disrupt that relationship. Any Black man caught in a clinch with a White woman is assumed to be a pimp and the girl a prostitute, so it’s standard practice to chuck them both in prison. Gigante confesses to a priest that he killed Joey Bananas’ son. And while despised by Gigante, Bumpy is friendly enough with Frank Costello to meet up for games of chess.

And if that’s not enough to keep the narrative wheels well and truly greased, there are some terrific power play subplots. Gigante wants Cassius Clay, then just a contender for the heavyweight crown, to throw a fight and Bumpy backs the boxer as much out of the chance to annoy his rival as in sympathy for the pugilist.

Bumpy goes into partnership with Joey Bananas, again to thwart Gigante, only to find himself outsmarted when Gigante rigs the numbers racket so that Bumpy is faced with a debt of $300,000 that he doesn’t have. He tries to erase the debt by wiping out Valachi but that fails so he’s facing ruin.

In passing, we learn how the numbers racket actually works. The winning number is the last three digits of the amount taken at the box office at a racecourse. One of Gigante’s thugs compromises the gay accountant in charge of doing the adding up at the racecourse and gets him to change the number to Bumpy’s detriment. Normally, there’s no point rigging the number, and the Mafia plays hardball with anyone interfering with their system, but this time the whole of Harlem has bet on a number that has particular significance. So Gigante makes sure this number comes up so that Bumpy’s number is up.

The dramas and crises are evenly meted out and there’s scarcely a character who at some point is not struggling with a major personal dilemma. This has the kind of plotting that Taylor Sheridan excels at, setting up characters facing not just the usual problems of dealing with rivals but with characters facing family issues.

This season ends with the assassination of JFK which, ironically, helps the Mafia, the FBI’s major investigation of the criminal gangs being sidelined in the aftermath of the Presidential killing, and, equally ironically, pulls the plug on Bumpy’s plan to safeguard his own survival.

Great cast in superb form especially Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland, 2007) and Vincent D’Onofrio (The Eyes of Tammy Faye, 2021). Nigel Thatch is especially convincing as the soft-spoken firebrand – he had played Malcolm X before in Selma (2104) – while Giancarlo Esposito (Maxxine, 2024) has a ball as a tricksy but charming character.

Perhaps as surprising is the focus on the women who in gangster pictures are generally relegated to the roles of molls. Here, all defy the males in their lives. Ilfenesh Hadera (Highest 2 Lowest, 2025), as Bumpy’s wife Mayme, stands up to her husband with her upfront involvement in the civil rights movement while Antoinette Crowe-Legacy (Passing, 2021) as his daughter Elise not only joins the Nation of Islam but threatens to blow apart the family by revealing a major secret, and Lucy Fry (I Live Here Now, 2025) as Gigante’s daughter resorts to violence to take revenge on her father.

Hugely enjoyable – and thought-provoking.

I’m hooked. Catch it on Amazon Prime.

It’s rare to see an actor’s screen persona complete disappear when playing a role but that’s what Jessica Chastain achieves in this potentially Oscar-winning performance as the wife of television evangelist fraudster Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield). Responsible much of the time for holding Bakker together when he was falling apart, backing diversity at a time when it was anathema to any organised religion, although a fool for love and with an appetite for self-deception that would have floored a rhinoceros.

A fascinating docu-drama into how an opportunistic couple became the fatted calves their religion deplored. The movie doesn’t delve too deeply into the fund-raising activities of the couple any more than The Two Popes spent time wondering who funded the Vatican. Instead, it’s a character-driven study. There’s no doubt Bakker and Faye delivered on the motivational front to their legions (20 million subscribers at their peak), preaching about God’s love rather his downside of Hell and damnation. The fact that Faye got to sing and become an adored television personality was the least of it.

In keeping with a lot of modern biopics, it races through the years, new characters introduced with screen titles as we move from the trudge of freelance missionaries to low-grade television performers until, at Faye’s instigation, they set up their own television station. However big the bucks that roll in, it’s never enough, Bakker constantly in hock and coming up with more grandiose schemes to bankroll his grandiose schemes. It’s hard to say how much they actually achieved, since the film skips over this until Bakker is brought up on major fraud charges.

Instead what we have is a four-ring circus, Faye happily getting richer but missing out on the expected sex life that goes with it, excoriated for nearly having an affair, Bakker playing fast and loose with male and female but his transgressions not coming to light until much later, rival preaching kingpin Jerry Falwell (Vincent D’Onofrio) stitching them up when they fall, and Faye’s tight-permed thin-lipped mother Rachel (Cherry Jones) herself a “fallen woman.”

Although falling into the “Stand By Your Man” cateogory, Faye’s continued effervescence in the face of mounting scandal is astonishing, lack of fear of male hierarchy (calling Falwell by his Christian name instead of his title, going against inbred conservative politics) and her genuine desire to help those eviscerated by the world, namely AIDS victims, would have set her up almost for saintood had the pillar on which she depended not been made entirely of salt.

The movie is a fascinating insight into how slick evangelism parts people from their bucks, almost a masterclass in maximizing frailty and playing the victim – more money rolls in when they confess infidelity and weakness than when playing superheroic good guys. Forget the hypocrisy with which it paints the television evangelist and the viewers (i.e. suckers) keeping the enterprise afloat, the Catholic church made a mint from its parishioners, anybody who sought comfort in religion had something wrong with them as was pointed out to Clint Eastwood in Million Dollar Baby.

As I knew nothing about any of the background and was only vaguely familiar with the real-life characters, I thought it was superb, but mostly through the acting. I have rarely seen an actor play vulnerability so well without an eye to self-pity. It’s ironic of course that Faye is so in favour of love when she is denied it first by her mother and then by her husband. Only an adoring wife would fail to see the weasely character she married.

Chastain transitions from giggly teenager, too enraptured by passion, to the self-possessed puppet-master and from thence to the all-engulfing stardom to which they have opposite responses, he overwhelmed by being found out, she believing every word he says and living the dream as if she was the original Kardashian. Garfield channels inner entitlement, entirely convincing as the ultimate salesman with the ultimate item to sell to a more than willing set of loyal customers, happy to sacrifice his wife’s shame at the altar of mammon while hiding his own indiscretions. But he’s also the preacher as businessman, learning from his predecessors, planning to out-do his rivals, praying that he can keep the devil at bay.

And that’s not forgetting an excellent turn by Cherry Jones as the repressed mother who would have been disowned by her own church except they had no one else to play the piano, fearful but never tearful, her only criminal act holding on to a cherished fur coat that should have been surrendered to the law. Vincent D’Onofrio relishes playing the sanctimonious thug, wooed by politicians, kowtowed-to by preacher underlings, with a whole pile of machinations up his sleeve.

Chastain’s performance belongs to those larger-than-life real-life characters imbued by Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich, 2000) and Jennifer Lawrence (Joy, 2015) who turned their fragility on its head and fully deserves her Oscar nomination. A fascinating film with terrific performances, and enjoyable with it.

Tag: Vincent D'Onofrio

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