Television Reviews : Nitti’s Not All Nastiness in ABC’s ‘The Enforcer’

You’re uneasy feeling compassion for a mobster who’s nicknamed “the enforcer.”

But the notorious Frank Nitti’s heart does shine through in a new ABC movie centering on Chicago’s gangland of the 1920s and 1930s. If nothing else, “Frank Nitti: The Enforcer,” airing at 9 p.m. Sunday on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42, proves that even a cold-blooded killer can fall in love, experience remorse and be a quasi-sympathetic character, while being up to his shoulder holster in crime and gore. At least he can in a TV script.

Credit Anthony LaPaglia’s interesting work as Nitti--seen here as the real brains behind Al Capone’s criminal empire--for creating interest in this otherwise unrewarding crime biography written by Lee David Zlotoff and directed by Michael Switzer. LaPaglia’s quiet, introspective ruthlessness as Capone’s top lieutenant is a wrenching diversion from the comic Nitti caricatures in “The Untouchables” of TV and recent movie fame. Sure he’s a time bomb, subject to instant violent outbursts. But this Nitti is also a family man who kills only . . . when he has to.

And he’s a Nitti you care about just a little too much for comfort.

“The Enforcer” begins with Nitti’s apparent suicide and then flashes back. We meet him after he arrives in Chicago in 1913 and learns barbering while easing into low-level crime and ingratiating himself with the kingpin-to-be Capone, played here by Vincent Guastaferro as sort of a big, thick-headed bozo whom Nitti easily manipulates.

The man dogging them both is not Eliot Ness (who gets only one backhanded mention here) but prosecutor Hugh Kelly (Michael Moriarty), who reacts to his death with sardonic resignation.

Meanwhile, the enforcer’s suicide is played poignantly, as somehow more tragic and meaningful than the other deaths he caused. That’s show biz.