True Action: Kill the Irishman

In this edition of True Action we take a look at 2011’s Kill the Irishman. The film takes a look at the real life world of organized crime in Cleveland in the 60’s and 70’s and more specifically the Irish-American gangster Danny Greene. The film was adapted from Rick Porrello’s book To Kill the Irishman: The War That Crippled the Mafia. The movie featured an all-star cast that included Ray Stevenson, Vincent D’Onofrio, Val Kilmer, Christopher Walken and Robert Davi.

• The Movie: Kill the Irishman tells the tale of the rise and fall of Danny Greene (Ray Stevenson, Accident Man). The story begins in the early 1960’s, with Greene and his friends working as longshoreman on the docks of Cleveland.  When their crooked union boss Jerry Merke gets wind that Danny Greene plans on running against him in the next election, Merke tries to intimidate Danny Greene. To say this plan of action backfires would be a major understatement… Greene ends up taking out Merke’s hired muscle and bitch slaps Merke right out of office… literally! Greene’s success in the business world is mirrored in his personal life, he falls in love, gets married, buys a house and has a kid… everything is coming up Greene!   Now I should mention that prior to becoming the new union president, Danny found himself in cahoots with Italian mobster John Nardi (Vincent D’Onofrio, Jurassic World) after Danny cut a deal with Nardi to get a friend out of some serious gambling debt. The relationship between Greene and Nardi only grows stronger once Danny Greene has the power position in the union… but a newspaper reporter causes Danny Greene’s world to come crumbling down around him. Greene is arrested and charged with labor racketeering, grand larceny and extortion… but in the end, Danny takes a plea, cuts a deal with the FBI to be their eyes and ears on the goings on of the criminal underworld in Northern Ohio (a deal that Danny never really lived up to). Danny is also banned from the union for life…  which means Danny has to find a new line of work. Greene gets a gig working as the muscle for loan shark Shondor Birns (Christopher Walken, A View to a Kill). The Greene/Birns relationship is great at first but eventually sours after a deal Birns arranged between Greene and the Gambino Family does not turn out favorably for anyone. The remainder of the movie sees Danny Greene cheat death time and time again, frustrating the members of the Cleveland mafia who want him dead. Eventually the Gambino Familly steps in and on October 6, 1977 Greene would meet his untimely demise at the hands of mafia hit man Ray Ferrito (Robert Davi, Licence to Kill).

• The True Story: Like all movies based on true stories you have to expect some inaccuracies and some embellishing of the truth and Kill the Irishman is no exception. The most glaring mistake is the date the movie lists as the day Shondor Birns is murdered by car bomb. The movie states it is March 8, 1975 when in fact Birns was killed on March 25, 1975. A minor mistake, but one that could have been completely avoided… The movie also depicts Danny Greene being the one who pushed the detonator that killed Shondor Birns and shows Danny watching on as his former boss is blown to pieces.In actuality, Birns murder remained unsolved and there was never any evidence linking Greene to Birns’ death but there’s no doubt it made for a better narrative and it was one of the more memorable scenes in the movie… The same can be said for the movie portraying Danny Greene as the man who ends up killing his longtime friend Art Sneperger with a car bomb. Greene was questioned by the police but never charged for Sneperger’s murder… Having lived in the Cleveland area most of my life, I also could not help but notice the complete lack of any notable Cleveland landmarks, but that was for good reason. While the real life events took place in Cleveland and the movie is set in Cleveland, Kill the Irishman was was actually shot in nearby Detroit… Lastly, I thought the number of car bombings in the movie was a classic Hollywood exaggeration, but the truth is in 1976 the national news referred to Cleveland as Bomb City U.S.A. (insert your Cleveland jokes here). The bombings were so frequent that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (or ATF for those in the know) created a headquarters in Northeast Ohio.

If you want to know more about Danny Greene there is plenty of information out there, including the book by Ray Porrello and the documentary Danny Greene: The Rise and Fall of the Irishman…