Prolific director Joseph Pevney is better known for his next venture -- the Star Trek television series -- than this conventional docudrama on mobster "Dutch" Schultz (played by Vic Morrow). Rather than take the focus of 1997's Hoodlum, in which Schultz's attempt to move into Harlem is thwarted, the events leading to the demise of the nearly illiterate, Bronx-born, "king of beer" are stressed. His affair with Iris Murphy (Leslie Parrish) also gets front-and-center treatment when Iris leaves her policeman husband to hook up with Schultz, only to degenerate into alcoholism. To the credit of the director, the repugnant Schultz (whose real name was Arthur Flegenheimer) is not romanticized, even though the legend of his "buried treasure" and the literary non-sequitur of his famous, 1935 deathbed ramblings would tend to lure anyone into digressions.
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