Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on November 2013

Some filmmaking duos are just too good to stay apart long. A full 40 years after their first collaboration with the gangster film Mean Streets in 1973, Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese teamed up again for another mafia film, Malavita (released in the US as The Family). “It is always great to work with Marty, and I will always take the opportunity,” the 70-year-old actor said during a visit to Tokyo for the film’s Japan premiere. French film stalwart Luc Besson penned the script about a New York mafioso who is sent with his wife and kids to France under a witness relocation program and later decided to direct after De Niro was cast. Sensing the film would contain a lot of references to the star’s earlier films with Scorsese, Besson called to get the OK and was thrilled when the Taxi Driver director went one step further and signed on as executive producer in order to work with De Niro again. Besson calls the finished product “a love letter to Scorcese.” De Niro, who is no stranger to film festivals after heading the jury at Cannes in 2011, was pleasantly surprised by fans he meet while attending the Tokyo International Film Festival with his wife last month. “Everyone is so well behaved,” the Oscar-winner observed. “It is not like festivals in the West where people yell at you and jump all over you.”

The Family is now playing.

Read Don Morton’s review.