TV Review : ‘Sugartime’: Humor, Hit Men in McGuire-Giancana Story

HBO’s “Sugartime” is a diverting mobster-moll movie that leans heavily on a docu-comedy narrative in which humor and hit men surface about equally.

A book by former FBI agent William F. Roemer Jr. is the basis for this story about the unlikely romance between Chicago crime boss Sam Giancana and Phyllis McGuire, a minister’s daughter who with her two sisters formed a popular pop singing group of the 1960s. It was this mutual fixation, apparently, that helped bring down both the singer and Giancana, a widower with three daughters.

If director John N. Smith has Mary-Louise Parker playing McGuire a bit too wide-eyed (physically, she’s a closer match to Marilyn Monroe), John Turturro is a commanding Giancana, whether exploding in rage or silently glowering. Even the air around him seems heavy with menace and danger, making his capitulation to the initially wholesome singer all the more intriguing.

Parts of Martyn Burke’s script play like a recap of FBI wiretaps and surveillances that Roemer participated in, others like the product of someone’s dark wit. In the latter case, for example, two of Giancana’s mugs take bets with each other on how long an assassination target will be able to refrain from plugging himself with a shotgun they’ve trip-wired to his mouth.

Less-lethally amusing blasts come during Giancana’s extended gift-lavishing courtship of McGuire that climaxes, literally, when he gives her yet another item of expensive jewelry while they have sex as FBI eavesdroppers listen in. Eventually, McGuire is sucked into Giancana’s crime universe, where in one instance the CIA tries to recruit him to murder Fidel Castro and where Smith juxtaposes the McGuire Sisters singing their frothy songs on stage with Giancana-ordered violence that includes a grisly head-bashing.

Ultimately, Giancana gets his own comeuppance, not only from authorities but from his Mafia colleagues. However, beware of how this movie ends in that regard, with Giancana’s murderer being clearly identified even though no one has been charged with the crime. Like its criminal subject, “Sugartime” should be viewed at times with skepticism.

* “Sugartime” airs tonight at 8 p.m. on HBO.