Three stars only because of the performance by Slaine as Nick's friend. This movie is comically bad. Every time you see the lead character he is either lighting a cigarette (he lights no fewer than 5 cigarettes in the opening scenes alone), or tossing a long, freshly lit cigarette out a car window. It almost seems as if somebody in production decided Nick looks good with a full Marlboro 120, but not with one that is half smoked. If it didn't mean sitting through this mud again, I'd love to go back and see exactly how many times a cigarette is lit by either Nick one of the other one dimensional wannabe gangster characters. At any given time somebody is flipping open an old school zippo and doing a Fonzarello routine lighting his smoke. The only saving grace in this film is the performance by Slaine as Nick's best friend. This guy is extremely watchable in this role (and lights up the screen instead of a smoke).
Review of By the Gun
