Review: De Niro, Murray Sidestep Typecast in ‘Mad Dog and Glory,’ a Funny and Sweet Gangster Film

In “Mad Dog and Glory,” Robert De Niro plays soft-spoken Chicago detective Wayne “Mad Dog” Dobie, who also does crime scene photography and photography in general. While at a crime scene he goes to a nearby convenience store and comes across an attempted robbery. 

Being held at gunpoint is local gangster Frank Milo (Bill Murray), a man with an apparent death wish as he bad-mouths the man with the gun. After Mad Dog saves him, Frank invites him to a club a couple nights later. Then, as a thank you, he gives him a most unusual gift: one week with a gorgeous bartender named Glory (Uma Thurman). 

Ah, ‘Mob Movie March’ at The Movie Buff isn’t complete without De Niro or Martin Scorsese. Mind you, Scorsese only produced this film; but the pairing still stands. This one, directed by John McNaughton, feels like a lighter gangster project out of De Niro. It features an interesting performance for the simple fact he’s going against typecast. 

If you hear that De Niro is in a gangster movie, you expect him to be the guy threatening everyone and ruling the city. He finds his fight during the film, but for the most part he is perceived as arguably meek, where he’s received the name “Mad Dog” at his precinct for being so timid. 

It’s interesting getting this different side of De Niro, and I’m glad he took that risk to playing this character instead of Frank, as he was offered the role of the gangster originally. Bill Murray plays against type as well as Frank Milo as he threatens people. Milo’s also an aspiring comedian who isn’t supposed to be funny, often doing sets at his own nightclub because he owns it, telling mediocre jokes where only his cronies are in hysterics.

There’s all a sense that Frank is a lonely man just wanting a friend, as well, and he has a mean streak in him. Murray playing that mean streak is believable, because there’s an aura about him where you’d still want to be his friend and it’ll just be more surprising when he gets sick of you and offs you. The dynamic between Murray and De Niro at here is interesting because they’re playing into these roles they don’t always play, and I think that’s what helps make “Mad Dog and Glory” noteworthy; it’s light on plot, and it would have been more interesting to watch Mad Dog actually solve a crime as a detective. 

Instead, the bulk of the “police work” in the film is finding a couple of bodies, taking some pictures, and then wondering if Frank is up to anything nefarious and not being able to do anything about it. Any police work surely would have enhanced the film, but it’s mostly about the pairing found in its admittedly great title. That’s also why this feels like a light affair because the film is very much a romance at its heart between De Niro’s Mad Dog and Thurman’s Glory. 

De Niro and Thurman’s chemistry is sweet and works and it’s too cute, such as when Thurman presses her nose against De Niro; though the film’s most intimate moments can get somewhat awkward watching De Niro trying to work his magic. Thurman, filming this at the age of 21 (this was filmed in 1991 and released in 1993) before her Tarantino days shows why she was bound to be a star. She has charm, beauty, and compassion for days here as a smart character caught in an unfortunate situation. I enjoy watching her sweeter roles especially since I watched her on-screen for the first time as The Bride in “Kill Bill: Volume 1” when I was about 11 years old. I’ll always think of her as a bad ass, so it’s nice to see this side of her in a film like this. It’s a film with a premise that really makes the comp of “‘Pretty Woman’ but with gangsters” an easy one. 

As well, some of the film gets a bit iffy when you consider that Milo surely thinks of Glory as property and it comes down to the film’s objectification, and it’s never clear what Milo expected to happen when the one week was up. That’s what marks a shift in tone in “Mad Dog and Glory:” the first hour has some crime and some sweet chemistry; but once the honeymoon period is up in the third act, it changes to a bit where De Niro has to bring his Mad Dog side out of him and Murray has to act up the gangster side of him. It’s all a bit rushed in pacing in the third act; but it’s a sweet film nonetheless and some easy watching.