Claudio Carvalho The mobster 'Cucumber' Frank de Marco (Alec Baldwin) is married with the housewife Angela de Marco (Michelle Pfeiffer) and she in unhappy with their marriage and wants the divorce. Frank is having a love affair with Karen Lutnick (Nancy Travis), who is the mistress of his boss Tony 'The Tiger' Russo (Dean Stockwell). When Tony discovers their love affair, he kills them in a party. Tony is under surveillance of the FBI agents Mike Downey (Matthew Modine) and Ed Benitez (Oliver Platt) and during the wake, Tony kisses Angela. The agents and Tony's wife Connie Russo (Mercedes Ruehl) believe that the widow Angela is having an affair with Tony. Angela takes the opportunity to move from the suburbs to a small apartment in New York with her son. Meanwhile Mike bugs her apartment and soon they fall in love with each other. But Tony discovers her new address and courts her. Soon the FBI Senior Management blackmails Angela to force her to get close to Tony to help the FBI to arrest him and she discovers that Mike is an agent. Will Angela give a second chance to Mike?"Married to the Mob" is another great film from the 80's, directed by Jonathan Demme and with a story with comedy, romance and action. The chemistry between Michelle Pfeiffer and Matthew Modine is impressive but Mercedes Ruehl steals the show. There is cameo participation of famous people and this movie is still attractive and has not aged after being watched many times along almost thirty years. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "De Caso com a Máfia" ("In an Affair with the Mafia")

utgard14 Mafia widow Michelle Pfeiffer tries to start over, away from her late husband's criminal life. She moves into a crummy apartment on the bad side of town with her son and gets a job as a hairdresser. Meanwhile, she is followed by horny mafia boss Dean Stockwell out to sleep with her and undercover FBI agent Matthew Modine trying to nab Stockwell. Somewhat inevitably, Modine falls for Pfeiffer and things become complicated. Mostly light dramedy with a great cast. I've seen it called a screwball comedy but I can't really agree with that. It has too many serious moments for a screwball, I think. Pfeiffer is wonderful and owns the movie. Stockwell is also good with a fun performance by Mercedes Ruehl as his jealous wife. It's no classic but worth a look.

jzappa The only problem with Married to the Mob is that it is not funny. It dresses up exactly like a romantic comedy, but almost nothing that happens is funny. But if you can look at it as a film where almost nothing funny happens, then you'll have a really good time. It's a glitzy mob film, too, as per the title. Extremely glitzy. But the director, Jonathan Demme, is one of the few prevailing cult directors who fully and completely embraced the 1980s in his work from that decade rather than understandably pretending it was still the 1970s.The opening credits combine 1980s animation, Italian-Americanism and mise-en-scene lathered on top of each other at once. From there, despite 1980sness, it feels about right. The lighting by Demme's frequent cinematographer Tak Fujimoto and jukebox soundtrack rife with widely varying pop and alternative jams are gaudy and that is indeed controlled and nuanced as part of the atmosphere. Demme is good at colorful instant characterizations in his visual and sometimes seemingly impetuous composition of a fun mix of styles, a plot that could've gone any which way, where a smooth FBI agent, played by a very bland Matthew Modine, trying to infiltrate a mafia family, sees a chance when a gun moll, played with come-hither allure by Michelle Pfeiffer, tries to leave the criminal lifestyle after her trigger-man husband, in just what you would hope for in an Alec Baldwin performance, is wacked.The way it goes works for awhile, because Demme seems to have a firm hand on the wheel. He knows the significance of showing us the very subjective and relatable life-at-home scenes with Pfeiffer, as well as her cares and longings as a morally conflicted mom, although her relationship with son Joey is taken a bit for granted. What mobster's son is listening to party-pooper mom when dad's boss, played with Dean Stockwell's trademark naturalness and by far the scene-stealing stand-out of the cast, is giving him such awesome gifts? On the whole though, Demme's lathered-on stylizations are easily viewed as a novel take on a fun crime thriller tale.Ultimately, though, we find we've been going the wrong way, because inevitably, Modine and Pfeiffer have to fall in love. That's not inherently bad, and every here and there it actually feels bearable, but as a romantic subplot, it is not handled interestingly, or well, hardly at all because it hopscotches across various sundry clichés, which fulfill the initial expectation of a cheesy 1980s date flick, and for that audience, I think it has just the right impact. But for someone who has found themselves genuinely interested in the story and the aesthetic approach, it is a let-down into state of tedium.So it's a decent movie with huge missteps at certain points, but as a date movie or a nostalgic piece for those who grew up in the '80s, perhaps saw a lot of date movies in the '80s, the entertainment value is not as likely to fluctuate, except for said deficit in true laughs. There maybe a few scoffs, and it's very broadly tongue-in-cheek, but I wouldn't leave the comedy aisle with the high hopes with which I'd have initially entered. Whatever the case anyway, there are additional joys in bit roles by great character actors who have by now begun to fade, like Nancy Travis, Joan Cusack and Oliver Platt.

ferbs54 What happened to Ava Gardner in the 1940s and Marilyn Monroe in the '50s also seemed to take place for modern-day actress Michelle Pfeiffer in the '80s: Her remarkable good looks got in the way of her being taken seriously as an accomplished, superbly talented actress. Anyone looking for validation of Pfeiffer's dramatic abilities need look no further than her work in 1991's "Frankie and Johnny" or '92's "Love Field" (a personal favorite of mine); those looking to see what a splendid comedic actress she can be, when given the right part, should check out 1988's "Married to the Mob." In this one, she plays Angela Demarco, the widow of a recently "iced" Mob hit-man, who moves from her garishly tacky Long Island home to start a new life for herself and her son, while being pursued by Mob boss Dean Stockwell and FBI man Matthew Modine. While this movie has lots going for it (a very amusing script; offbeat characters; sudden sharp turns to unexpected violence, as in director Jonathan Demme's previous effort "Something Wild"; and hilarious yet menacing performances by Stockwell and Mercedes Ruehl, as his jealous wife from hell), Michelle steals the show easily. Notice how perfectly she nails Angela's undereducated, Long Island Italian accent, and the many fine mannerisms that she brings to the role to really flesh out this spunky and surprisingly bright character. Once upon a time, long ago, Oscars were handed out to actresses for comedic roles such as this one. Had this film been made 60 years ago, Michelle mighta been a contenduh...