With The Irishman dropping on Netflix streaming this coming Wednesday, now seems like a fine time to look back at the very first time Martin Scorsese directed a gangster picture. Granted, his second feature film,
Boxcar Bertha, had heavy crime movie elements to it too, but that was a romantic drama first and foremost.
Mean Streets is 110% a gangster crime vehicle, the kind of movie Scorsese would go back to multiple times in his career. Despite being a recurring genre stop for him, Scorsese manages to make sure each of his crime films are different from one another,
The Departed is not the exact same movie as
Casino, for example.
