Kill the Irishman

Mob history is resurrected with a blue-collar, basic meat-and-potatoes sensibility as writer-director Jonathan Hensleigh transforms Detroit into 1960s and 1970s Cleveland and Rick Porrello’s nonficton book To Kill the Irishman: The War That Crippled the Mafia, into a blunt, brutal but immersive wallow in organized crime. Former interior designer and strapping Punisher star Ray Stevenson plays Danny Greene, the Gaelic tough guy who works his way into and out of the graces of a local Mafia family as his résumé stretches from dock worker to union boss to enforcer to independent crime lord. As the story edges toward a 1976 turf war in which 36 bombs rattle the city, Greene emerges as an underground legend known as the man the Mafia is unable to kill and the cops are unable to imprison. The cast includes Vincent D’Onofrio, Val Kilmer, Christopher Walken, Paul Sorvino and several familiar mugs from The Sopranos and Goodfellas.