Mikey and Nicky

Directed by Elaine May | 106 minutes | M | Retrospective Screening |

8:10pm Friday, 15 May | Brunswick Picture House | Buy Tickets | Buy Passes [SOLD OUT] ENCORE: 6:15pm Sunday, 15 May | Balam Balam Place - Level 3 | Buy Tickets | Buy Passes

On a night like this, there are no rules

Inspired by director Elaine May's upbringing, we watch as a friendship palpably implodes over one night in this gritty, Philadelphia-set mobster tale starring John Cassavetes and Peter Falk. Small-time gangster Nicky (Cassavetes) suspects there’s a hit out on him. He calls on his old pal Mikey (Falk) for back-up, and the pair embark on a restless escapade through dive bars, cemeteries and all-night movie theatres, dodging the low-level hitman who is indeed on Nicky’s tail.

Veering from tenderness to mutual distrust, they have a love-hate bond that feels set to fracture at any moment. Intense and freewheeling in style, Mikey and Nicky is easily mistaken for an improvisation. In fact, it was precisely scripted by May, who drew on stories she’d heard growing up around mobsters. May clashed with the studio over 110 days of filming and two years of editing, and the film was buried on release—but is now ripe for rediscovery 50 years later.

SIMILAR: Dog Day Afternoon, After Hours, The Long Goodbye, Mean Streets, Husbands, Edward Hopper paintings

"a nuclear attack on toxic masculinity" - Matt Patches, Polygon

"always moving forward, building and building towards its heartbreaking climax" - Sean Mulvihill, FanboyNation

Country: United States
Year: 1976
Language: Hebrew, English