According to the critic the movie is “a big, brash, splatteringly violent mob opera…” (Bradshaw, 2006). He later describes the film with the following sentence: “This is an unapologetic, unironised crime-family drama…” (Bradshaw, 2006) thus putting it in the genre of a crime-family drama film. The movie revolves around loyalty, betrayal; corrupt police officers and scheming gangsters so it follows most of the conventions of crime dramas. It deviates from genre conventions by providing a more in depth look at the lives of two different characters who work undercover and how it is affecting their lives. The character development is like no other film in this category. The dialogue or lack thereof in some cases also shows how the movie does not follow the genre conventions. Another genre convention missing from this movie is that the main villain turns out to be an informant for the FBI, which is very rare for a mob boss involved in organized crime in crime dramas.
7. The deviation from genre conventions is why this movie gets such a positive review from the critic. The movie seems familiar yet totally different at the same time. It follows some of the genre conventions like the plot and setting but it truly makes its mark as a film with the way it is different from anything that has ever been put on screen before. Martin Scorsese’s innovation in the way he makes the actors behave in certain ways or uses the silence to add a dramatic effect shows that by not following genre conventions you can still end up making a film that is a commercial