Meyer Lansky is one of those gangsters without an epic death story. He died quietly in bed in Florida, a very old man suffering from lung cancer. It’s still unknown if he died wealthy or just middle-class; it was rumored there were millions of dollars hidden away, although his family insists otherwise. Either way, Lansky’s life was undeniably exciting and filmmaker Eytan Rockaway was captivated by the story of it early on.
"My father was a history professor and wrote a book about gangsters,” said Rockaway, the son of Robert A. Rockaway, who is known for his book, "But He Was Good to His Mother: The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters."
Like his father, Rockaway found gangsters "fascinating and adventurous."
"Like something out of Greek mythology," he said.
The senior Rockaway interviewed Lansky before his death and the film's screenplay relied heavily on that resource as the younger Rockaway crafted the story.
In Rockaway's big-screen version of Lansky’s life, the notorious gangster is portrayed by none other than Harvey Keitel, who has had an equally illustrious life.
Rockaway said he had to stay after Keitel to make it happen, but the result of working with the actor was magical.
"The movie took three years to get off the ground and after he said he was attached I’d actually see him in the neighborhood in New York and I’d always approach him. He says I was the only stalker he was actually happy to see,” Rockaway said.
At the center of Rockaway’s movie is the relationship between an aging Lansky and a young journalist eager to make a name for himself (and make some money).
Writer David Stone (played by a very '80s-looking, mustached Sam Worthington) convinces Lansky he’s the right one for the job of giving Lansky’s version of his narrative a fair shot when he’s finally honest that money is a motivation — a language Lansky (often called "the mob’s accountant") can understand.
David’s back is against the wall as he owes his wife alimony and his kid a set of braces, but Lansky’s story seems motivation enough for David to stay in Miami, far from his family, to try to make the biographical portrayal of the mobster a success (despite soon getting entangled with the FBI, which would still like to make Lansky pay). The pair soon become close as they both enjoy living a life “full of shades of grey,” as David puts it.
“It’s a movie of a man looking at his own morality,” Rockaway said.
"Lansky tells David if you lose your character, you lose everything. At the end of the day, his legendary life comes down to family, comes down to love, and hopefully we can observe morality through a different lens — specifically his life with his wife. Not everything is black and white and Lansky treaded the thin, grey line very carefully.”
Lansky was drawn to crime as a broke kid setting up a lucrative crap game with Bugsy Siegel, soon graduating to auto theft, and Rockaway thinks that’s exactly what makes a fantastic film lead.
"We human beings are attracted to larger-than-life characters and lives. What attracted me to the story attracts most people — those who live scary and dangerous lives with a different set of lives and codes from our own offer some level of attraction," he said.
"A lot of gangsters had such capacity for pain and chaos, but also had moral codes and did good things — gangsters are both like superheroes or antiheroes, and of course there is fascination with lives you don’t always get to see."
Rockaway’s David is obviously also fascinated by the gangster life and when he takes on Lansky’s story, his own life takes a dark turn.
"I think for him it was an escape from dealing with issues with his family," Rockaway said.
"Lansky is and was one of the most famous in American history. He started the National Crime Syndicate. Money and the appeal of power are two elements that drove him, but I don’t think he thought he was gonna get in trouble but when he got a taste of that world it started to run away from him. That life is not for the faint of heart."
When David gets his own taste, he leans away from it rather than into it and wisely so, realizing he’s more of a storyteller than a story-maker.
What both Rockaway and David did lean into is everything that’s complicated about Lansky.
While he was at one point one of the most dangerous men alive, he was also a patriot, helping his country when called to do so.
"One person’s hero is another person’s terrorist," mused Rockaway.
"While Lansky was a criminal, evil man, he loved his country. When he had the opportunity to fight the Nazis, he took it."
Lansky and his gangs were known to interrupt Nazi rallies held in New York, portrayed movingly in the film. At the time, U.S. intelligence officers even called upon mob gangs for help.
For Rockaway, he was always looking for Lansky’s arc.
"It was important to me to show things people hadn’t seen ... an arc to his morality, both good and bad," he said.
Rockaway shows how Lansky doted on his son, but abused his wife; how he did not hold back on showing no mercy to Nazis, but equally showed no mercy toward business rivals. Again, the grey line is thin.
Ultimately for Rockaway, the movie is a genealogy of morals. The former philosophy major wanted to "examine what is evil, what is good and bad."
"I answered some of my questions, but I also wanted to be as objective as possible with Lansky the character, and create my own version of him so the audience could make up their own mind about him,” he said.
Lansky is in theaters and On Demand now.