Plot
Charlie (Harvey Keitel) is a young Italian-American man who is trying to move up in the local New York Mafia but is hampered by his feeling of responsibility towards his reckless friend, Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro), a small-time gambler who owes money to many loan sharks. Charlie works for his uncle, Giovanni (Cesare Danova), the local caporegime, mostly collecting debts. He is also having a hidden affair with Johnny Boy's cousin, Teresa (Amy Robinson), who has epilepsy and is ostracized because of her condition — especially by Charlie's uncle.
Charlie is torn between his devout Catholicism and his Mafia ambitions. As the film progresses, Johnny becomes increasingly self-destructive, growing continually more disrespectful of his creditors. Failing to receive redemption in the church, Charlie seeks it through sacrificing himself on Johnny's behalf.
At a bar, a local loan shark named Michael (Richard Romanus), comes looking for Johnny to "pay up", but to his surprise, Johnny insults him. Michael lunges at Johnny who retaliates by pulling a gun on him. After a tense standoff, Michael walks away, and Charlie and Johnny decide to leave town for a brief period with Teresa. After a calm getaway by car, the trio is eventually pursued by Michael and his henchman (Martin Scorsese), in another car. The henchman fires shots at Charlie's car, hitting Johnny in the neck, and Charlie in the hand, causing Charlie to crash the car. The film ends with an ambulance and police arriving at the scene, and paramedics take them away.
Read more about this topic: Mean Streets
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)