May 5, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Danny A. Abeckaser
Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City, from 1988 to 2002, the dramatic film “Mob Cops” (very loosely inspired by on true events) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Latin people) representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.
Culture Clash: A police officer works hard to bring down two corrupt cops who are bribed by the Mafia and have been getting away with crimes for several years.
Culture Audience: “Mob Cops” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and crime dramas, but this horrible movie is bottom-of-the-barrel filmmaking.
Mob Cops (a terrible drama about good cops, bad cops and Mafia gangters) has several murders, including the killing of brain cells when watching this dreadful and dull abomination. It might be more entertaining to try to count the movie’s overload of curse words. At several points in the movie, the word “fuck” is said multiple times per sentence by all the characters in a scene. It’s the movie’s attempt to look “authentic,” but the dialogue and filmmaking in “Mob Cops” are so bad, it makes the movie look very fake.
Directed by Danny A. Abeckaser and written by Kosta Kondilopoulos, “Mob Cops” is the type of movie that looks like it was made by people who want to be professional actors, but they’re not talented enough to be in good movies, so they finance movies that they can star in themselves. Abeckaser is not only the director of “Mob Cops,” but he’s also a producer of the movie and the actor who is the movie’s “hero” protagonist. Unfortunately, he’s probably the worst actor in the movie’s principal cast. All this proves is that it’s easy to get a starring role in a movie if you’re directing the movie and you’re one of the people paying for it.
“Mob Cops” (which takes place in New York City) is supposedly based on true events, but there aren’t any particular cases or people you can point to and say the movie is definitely telling their story. “Mob Cops” begins by showing a scene in New York City’s Staten Island borough in 2002. A retired New York City Police Department (NYPD) detective named Tim Delgado (played by Abeckaser) visiting a lonely widow named Bridget Hughes (played by Deborah Geffner) at her home. As Tim explains in a voiceover, Bridget “married into a bad situation. Her brother-in-law was in the Mob, and that trickled down to her sons.”
Bridget’s older son Phil became one of Tim’s informants. Six years later, Phil was found dead in front of a strip club in a Mob-related death.” Bridget’s younger son Josh (played by Kyle Stefanski), whose criminal nickname was Dog Boy, was involved in Mob activities and disappeared. Tim feels guilty about Phil’s death. It’s one of the reasons why he visits Bridget on a regular basis.
On this particular visit, Bridget is annoyed with Tim and says, “We’re not friends.” This is Tim’s response when he comments on Phil’s death: “He knew what he was doing. You play with the devil, you always lose. You have to let it go.” What an obnoxious thing to say to a grieving parent.
As for the case of missing person Josh, Tim says: “Josh’s case isn’t just cold. It’s frozen.” That sound you hear is the collective grimace of Mafia movie fans who have to brace themselves with dread if they watch “Mob Cops” and quickly figure out it’s written like a throwaway version of Robert De Niro’s worst movies where he plays some type of crime boss. (And consider that De Niro has been in plenty of bad movies.)
It just so happens that Tim is writing a book about his NYPD experiences, with a focus on his takedown of two corrupt cops who worked together: Leo Benetti (played by Jeremy Luke) and Sammy Canzano (played by David Arquette), who get bribes from Mafia gang members. Leo and Sammy are both brutal thugs, but due to Arquette’s substandard acting, Sammy is the one who has a very forced, phony-sounding New York accent. The movie then goes into flashback mode to tell the story that Tim is writing for his book. Tim narrates the movie like a dimwitted chatterbox who can’t shut up.
The flashbacks start in 1988, with a scene that shows Leo on trial for unnamed corruption charges. There is no jury for this trial. Leo is acquitted by the judge, and it’s implied that the judge is also corrupt. Tim bitterly comments that after this acquittal, Leo got a job promotion at the NYPD. Leo also had a car dealership, which was an obvious way to launder his dirty money. Josh is in some of the flashbacks that show his connections to Leo and Sammy.
The rest of “Mob Cops” is a boring and convoluted retelling of various activities of the criminals who were being investigated by Tim and his cop partner Jesse Polino (played by Nathaniel Buzolic), who is as generic as generic can be. Ben Sherman (played by Bo Dietl) is described as “one of the Mob’s top earners—if you needed it, he could get it.” Ben worked for Mafia crime boss Johnny Galiano (played by Joseph Russo), who persuaded an unwitting stooge named Ira Grossman (played by Graham Sibley) to smuggle diamonds for Johnny.
It’s eventually revealed that Leo is a wannabe movie producer. It leads to one of the clumsiest and least-convincing parts of the movie, when someone goes undercover and pretends to be a movie producer to trap Leo. Kevin Connolly of “Entourage” fame has a small role as district attorney Raymond Varrone in “Mob Cops,” where Connolly looks embarrassed to be there. The “Mob Cops” roles for women are limited to being bystander wives, girlfriends or mothers who react to whatever the men in their lives are doing.
“Mob Cops” has so much nonsensical dialogue, the conversations become a brain-deadening blur. In a voiceover narration, Tim says of this two arch enemies: “If Benetti was a rattlesnake, Canzano was a cobra.” What is that supposed to mean? Nothing. There is no example shown in the movie to demonstrate this analogy.
At one point, crime boss Johnny is hauled into a NYPD station and questioned in an interrogation room by Tim and Jesse. Johnny smugly comments during the interrogation: “I’ve seen and done some shit that would make your assholes turn green.” Again: What is that supposed to mean? For all we know, he could be talking about getting diarrhea from eating rotten guacamole. Speaking of diarrhea, “Mob Cops” is the cinematic version of unwanted bodily waste. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
Lionsgate released “Mob Cops” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and on VOD on April 25, 2025.
