Married to the Mob (4K UHD Review)
Director
Jonathan DemmeRelease Date(s)
1988 (March 31, 2026)Studio(s)
Orion Pictures (Cinématographe/Vinegar Syndrome)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: B+
- Extras Grade: B+
Review
“God, you people work just like the mob! There’s no difference.”
“Oh, there’s a big difference, Mrs. de Marco. The mob is run by murdering, thieving, lying, cheating psychopaths. We work for the President of the United States of America.”
Jonathan Demme was on a roll in the Eighties after kicking off the decade with his Oscar-winning Melvin and Howard. He did have one major storm cloud in the form of a lead actor with a vision of her own for Swing Shift in 1983, but once that traumatic experience was over, he continued to forge his own idiosyncratic path. Demme reinvigorated the concert film with both Stop Making Sense and Swimming to Cambodia, and he also completely reinvented the screwball comedy with Something Wild. After that, he closed out the decade by making a romantic comedy of a different sort with Married to the Mob, which remains one of his breeziest and most effervescent efforts. The lighter tone and almost cartoonish style meant that it never became the critical darling that Something Wild had been, but it’s far too impeccably well-crated to be dismissed as one of his “lesser” efforts. It’s indisputably a product of Demme’s own offbeat vision, yet it’s still filtered through the lenses of his diverse collaborators on the project—and if there was anything that defined Demme’s approach to filmmaking, it was the collaborative nature of his process.
Married to the Mob started out as a screenplay by Barry Strugatz and Mark Burns, who centered their story around Angela de Marco (Michelle Pfeiffer), a suburban housewife who just happens to be married to mob enforcer “Cucumber” Frank de Marco (Alec Baldwin). A series of unfortunate events leads her to try to escape the life and start a new one of her own, but the mob boss Tony “The Tiger” Russo (Dean Stockwell) is hot on her heels, while Tony’s wife Connie (Mercedes Ruehl, a tiger of her own) is on the trail of both of them. Meanwhile, Angela has become the target of an FBI investigation led by Ed Benitez (Oliver Platt) and Mike Downey (Matthew Modine), the latter of whom will inadvertently become an important part of her attempt to forge a new life for herself.
The script from Strugatz and Burns may have provided the basic recipe, but turning that formula into the confection that is Married to the Mob required a legion of cast and crew members, all of them under the guiding hand of Demme as the master chef. He brought many of his trusted collaborators on board, like cinematographer Tak Fujimoto, production designer Kristi Zea, and costume designer Colleen Atwood. (Married to the Mob was actually Atwood’s first film with Demme, but it wouldn’t be her last.) They all helped bring the perfect pastel-fueled tone to the film—even title designer Pablo Ferro made an invaluable contribution in that regard. Demme engaged Talking Heads frontperson David Bryne to write the score, and he also added his own trademarked eclectic mix of songs to the soundtrack. It’s a stellar collection of tunes that includes Rosemary Clooney, New Order, Sinéad O’Connor, Chris Isaak, The Pixies, Tom Tom Club, The Feelies, Debby Harry, Brian Eno, Ziggy Marley, and more.
Demme’s gift for casting is also on full display in Married to the Mob. The supporting actors are superb, including Trey Wilson, Joan Cusack, O-Lan Jones, and Nancy Travis. He also featured members of his stock company like Charles Napier, producer Kenneth Utt, Tracey Walter, Paul Lazar, Joe Spinell, and “Sister” Carol East, plus cameos from a diverse group that included Isaak, Jake Johansen, Al Lewis, Colin Quinn, and Todd Solondz. Yet the film still belongs to its leads. Mercedes Ruehl owns the film with her scene-stealing performance—there’s a direct line from her work in Married to the Mob to her Oscar-winning performance in The Fisher King. Still, a romantic comedy like this couldn’t work without a plausible love story at its core, so Pfeiffer and Modine are the real key to holding all of the diverse ingredients together. They have genuine chemistry, and share some legitimately touching scenes together. Married to the Mob is a film about second chances, so both characters are given the opportunity to make their mistakes, accept the consequences, and then put everything behind them. It’s a sweet-natured heart to a film that could have felt trivial in lesser hands, but Demme, Pfeiffer, and Modine were up to the task.
Of course, there’s a bit more to the second chances in Married to the Mob than just the relationship between Angela and Mike. A few years later in Projections: A Forum for Filmmakers, Demme told author and critic David Thompson that he was attracted to the story because of its complete lack of themes and subtext, at least on one level. Yet he admitted that there was a subtle social message in Married to the Mob, namely “that people of different races especially, and people in general, can benefit by reaching out to other people, and by being reached out to in turn... Angela moves into profoundly more difficult living circumstances, surrounded by people who, through their ethnic definition or what have you, are relegated to a certain outsider status. Without beating it on the head, the audience sees: well, what do you know, down there people are people.”
Married to the Mob can indeed be read on a superficial level as pure escapist entertainment, but the collaborative style that defined Jonathan Demme’s filmmaking career extended to the stories that he told. Angela is finally able to build the new life that she craved, but she doesn’t do it alone. She has to be open to the new neighbors around her, and they have to be open to her in return. When these outsiders band together, they stop being outsiders and become a community instead. Demme was right: Married to the Mob doesn’t beat this message on the head, but it still rings through loud and clear. People are people, and we all benefit by reaching out to each other. Communities aren’t born, they’re built, and that’s as true of the real world as it is of Demme’s fantasy gangland.
Married to the Mob offers all of that, and yet it’s still not over once the closing credits start to roll. Demme had to cut the film down to a reasonable length for theatrical release, but he didn’t want to lose all of the deleted footage, so he included a montage of outtakes during the credits. The film definitely flows better without any of it, but it’s still nice to see a few details fleshed out a bit more than they were in the final cut. (Watch to the very end for a blooper that could have had tragic results if Modine didn’t have very quick reflexes.) Also, Married to the Mob has one of the single greatest credits ever: “Valet-Matic and Cat-O-Matic designed by Nancy Howard and Joe Smith.” (You’ll just have to see the film for yourself to understand that one, but let’s just say that Demme beat Wallace and Gromit to the punch.)
Tak Fujimoto shot Married to the Mob on 35mm film using Arriflex cameras with spherical lenses, framed at 1.85:1 for its theatrical release. Vinegar Syndrome is referring to this version simply as a “new 4K restoration of the film,” and given the fact that they don’t mention anything about the original negative, it appears to have been scanned from the interpositive instead. Regardless, while the previous 1080p master was also scanned from the IP (albeit at 2K), this is clearly a fresh scan that offers night-and-day improvements. The dupes for the opening titles are still soft, with coarse grain, and they’re filled with dirt, debris, and speckling that has been left alone since it was part of the original opticals and not a defect in the elements that were used. Once they’re over, fine details improve, the grain tightens up (although it’s still heavier than what would have likely been on a negative scan), and any remaining damage has been thoroughly cleaned up.
If there’s one criticism here, it’s that the HDR grades (both Dolby Vision and HDR10 are included) have been dialed up a bit too much at times, with saturation levels pushed to extremes (the greens of the suburban grass can be really intense, and the red lights over the King’s Roost now have an unearthly glow to them). The flesh tones are inconsistent, accurate in some shots but displaying pinkish-red colors in others. Yet despite any minor flaws, this is still a major upgrade over the previous Kino Lorber and Fun City Editions Blu-rays—it’s no contest in that regard. Married to the Mob has never looked better on home video.
Audio is offered in English 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English SDH subtitles. Married to the Mob was released theatrically in Dolby Stereo (SR in this case), and this appears to be the original matrix-encoded four channel mix. It’s a fairly restrained mix that’s typical of Dolby Stereo from that era, with the surrounds mostly providing ambient effects such as crowd noises. The dialogue remains front and center, and it’s always clear and comprehensible. Yet as with any Jonathan Demme film from the Eighties, it’s the music that’s the star of the show, with the songs and the score from David Byrne sounding wonderful as presented here. Everything is clean and free of distortion.
Vinegar Syndrome’s 4K Ultra HD release of Married to the Mob is a two-disc set that includes a Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film. It’s part of their Cinématographe sub-label, and it’s currently available in a Limited Edition of 5,000 copies. (There was also an even more limited version that included David M. Stewart’s book There’s No Going Back: The Life and Work of Jonathan Demme, but that’s long sold out at this point.) The discs themselves are contained in a simple but striking clothbound Mediabook with essays by Stewart, Aisha Harris, Mitchell Beaupre, and Nick Newman. The Mediabook is housed in a J-card slipcase featuring new artwork by Vlad Rodriguez, with a handy ribbon to help remove the book. The following extras are included, all of them in HD:
DISC ONE: UHD
- Commentary with Matthew Modine
- Commentary with Sean Fennessy
DISC TWO: BD
- Commentary with Matthew Modine
- Commentary with Sean Fennessy
- Bus Surfing (15:10)
- Realistic & Honest (17:43)
- After Angela (16:07)
- No Script No Job (22:47)
- Drawing Movies (14:08)
- Everyone Deserves a Second Chance (13:55)
- Restoring a Comedy Classic: Married to the Mob (74:50)
- Still Gallery (2:52, 86 in all)
- Theatrical Trailer (2:09)
Vinegar Syndrome has added two new commentary tracks for this release. The first is with Mattthew Modine, moderated by Vinegar Syndrome’s Justin LaLiberty. In practice, it’s an extended interview between Modine and LaLiberty, not so much a scene-specific commentary. Modine admits that he hasn’t seen the film in 30 years, but his memories are still good—as far as the production goes, anyway. (He tends to forget the names of some of the other actors). They cover how he became involved with the project, working with Demme, and the way that the director took relatively serious subject matter and intentionally made it silly. Modine had just come off working with Stanley Kubrick on Full Metal Jacket, so it was a drastically different experience. He also covers working with the rest of the cast and provides some thoughts about the story and the characters. He does tend to narrate a bit and things do get sparser as they go along, but LaLiberty still gets some interesting stories out of him.
The second commentary is with Sean Fennessey of the Big Picture and The Ringer podcasts. He also tends to be descriptive more than informational, but he does take the time to identify various actors and other collaborators with Demme. He also adds some personal notes as a Long Island native, admiring the way that Married to the Mob creates its New York environments. Along the way, he does provide an overview of Demme’s career up to that point and a few other background details, but it’s mostly an appreciation of the film by an obvious fan.
There are also five new interviews. Bus Surfing is with Matthew Modine, who covers some of the same territory that he does in the commentary track (in fact, he opens the commentary by saying that he already talked about something during the interview). But he does stress the collaborative nature of Demme’s filmmaking, and he tells the story of what really happened in the outtake that ends the film. Realistic & Honest is with Demme regular Paul Lazar, who details his lengthy relationship with the director and his comfort level with how the director worked. After Angela is with Barry Strugatz and Mark R. Burns, who explain how they conceived of the story, the process of finding the right tone, the casting, and working with Demme (yes, that’s a running theme throughout all of the interviews). No Script No Job is with ebullient producer Edward Saxon, who describes his background and how he offered something different than what Demme had experienced with previous producers—which is a big reason why they continued their partnership for more than a decade (he says that they made a bunch of pictures together, “some of them pretty good”). Drawing Movies is with writer/director John Dahl, who worked as storyboard artist and visual consultant on both Something Wild and Married to the Mob. He says that he was drawn to the film business due to the power of visuals, but he quickly learned how those visuals need to be used to convey the story.
Everyone Deserves a Second Chance is a new visual essay by filmmaker and programmer Chris O’Neill, who explains how Angela in Married to the Mob fits within Demme’s sensitive treatment of female characters throughout his career. Even when the other characters rise to the level of caricature, Angela always keeps things grounded—and O’Neill is careful to credit Michelle Pfeiffer for making the character work. She’s the main reason why the other actors are able to play their roles broader without unbalancing the film as a whole.
Finally, in addition to the film’s Trailer and a Still Gallery, there’s Episode 616 of the Wrong Reel Podcast, titled Restoring a Comedy Classic: Married to the Mob. James Hancock interviews Adam Rackoff about the process of putting together the 2022 Fun City Editions Blu-ray version of the film. That disc included a commentary with Danielle Henderson & Millie De Chirico and an interview with Mercedes Ruehl, plus different interviews with Modine, Barry Strugatz, and Mark R. Burns, none of which have been included here. While you’ll probably want to hang onto that disc for the exclusive extras, this Cinématographe set easily bests it with a more extensive collection of extras and much improved video quality. It’s not perfect, but it’s a major step up over any and all previous home video releases. It took a village to make Married to the Mob, and it took another village to put together such a loving tribute to the film. Highly recommended.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).