Black Hand Strawman

As the grandson of Sicilian immigrants, I don’t know whether to be proud or embarrassed by local filmmaker Terence O’Malley’s long but riveting documentary Black Hand Strawman, about the history of the Mafia in Kansas City. My father had the same reaction to The Godfather, which was released to a firestorm of criticism by Italian-Americans enraged at continually being typecast in films as coldblooded gangsters. O’Malley’s detailed profile could spark similar complaints. In fact, the director opens his film with national TV news footage from 1972 — when the Italian-American Unification Council bought every seat for The Godfather‘s local premiere, at the Empire Theatre, and then boycotted the screening. Black Hand Strawman is far more disturbing than The Godfather or Casino. The brutality and bloodshed, vividly depicted in press photos and video footage, is all too real. O’Malley breaks his film into somewhat choppy chapters and indulges a leisurely pace until the last third, when brazen corruption and turf battles explode into violence and murder. Martin Scorsese couldn’t do KC better than that.