"A true original and triumph of personal filmmaking" (Pauline Kael, The New Yorker), Mean Streets announced Martin Scorsese's arrival as a new filmmaking force - and marked his first historic teaming with Robert De Niro. It's a story Scorsese lived, a semi-autobiographical tale of the first-generation sons and daughters of New York's Little Italy.

Harvey Keitel plays Charlie, working his way up the ranks of a local mob. Amy Robinson is Teresa, the girlfriend his family deems unsuitable because of her epilepsy. And in the star making role that won Best Supporting Actor Awards from New York and National Society of Film Critics, De Niro is Johnny Boy, a small-time gambler in big-time debt to loan sharks.

Martin Scorsese's electrifying drama tells the story of Charlie (Harvey Keitel), a charming 27-year-old who is supported by his devoutly Catholic mother. He spends his days wandering the streets of New York City and nights hanging out drinking with his good friend Johnny Boy (the terrifyingly brilliant Robert De Niro), a loose cannon that can't seem to escape trouble. Charlie's extreme affability makes him the middle man between his mob-tied uncle Giovanni (Cesare Danova) and various clients, as well as between Johnny Boy and Michael (Richard Romanus), a bookie who has become fed up with Johnny Boy's constant debt dodging. As the city's San Gennaro Festival takes over the streets of Little Italy, Michael seeks revenge on Johnny Boy once and for all.

MEAN STREETS is the film in which Scorsese blossomed into one of the world's most ferociously distinct visionaries, a vision which has, for better or worse, become one of the most mimicked in the history of modern cinema. While his usage of a nostalgic pop music soundtrack, long one-takes and handheld cameras, and brutally realistic performances, spawned a generation of imitators, MEAN STREETS proves that while others may try to imitate, there is only one original. MEAN STREETS is a work of sheer cinematic bravado.