In what turned out to be a defining moment for American cinema, Mean Streets unleashed Scorsese upon an unsuspecting world. While not the 31-year-old director's first film, Mean Streets was the one that introduced many of his trademark obsessions: mobsters, notions of masculinity and religious concepts of sin and redemption.

More influentially though, Mean Streets also contained sequences with experimental and highly-stylized camera work - long tracking shots and slowed down action - and the groundbreaking use of contemporary music edited closely to the images, which have been copied endlessly but never achieved quite so successfully by anyone else since.

Scorsese grew up in New York's Sicilian neighbourhood off Elizabeth Street, and this film is the director's down-and-dirty valentine to the reckless world of his youth. It's a visceral slice of life that no longer exists, but the attention to detail in Mean Streets' rhythms and language still makes it very real indeed.

The film follows a group of small-time crooks. Central to its story is Charlie (Harvey Keitel), who's smart enough to know that if he plays it right with his mobster uncle, he could one day yet hang out with the big boys. The problem is Charlie's just a little too honorable, and has trouble reconciling his religious beliefs with his day-to-day sinning. As penance, he decides his cross to bear is Johnny Boy (De Niro), an unstable friend who cares for no-one but himself. In Charlie's mind, you make up for your sins on the street, not in church. But the drawback to this code is that it founders if nobody else adheres to it. Johnny Boy is content to continue messing around, blowing up postboxes and not repaying his debts, because he doesn't, and never will, care. Instead of cutting Johnny Boy loose as everyone advises, Charlie keeps his hand in (literally, the fire, when he visits church and tests the heat of a burning candle). And by vouching for Johnny Boy with the local loan shark, Charlie is caught in a no-win situation with disastrous consequences.

The opening sequence of Mean Streets, cued by The Ronette's "Be My Baby"; the camera following Charlie's passage through Tony's bar and Johnny Boy's slow motion entrance to the same place as "Jumping Jack Flash" blares from the jukebox, are all what are now recognised as vintage Scorsese - the beginnings of a engrossing and captivating visual style.

Yet despite the technical mastery and innovation of Mean Streets, the film lacks an emotional punch. Since Scorsese knows his milieu intimately, he doesn't waste time plotting the big picture, concentrating instead on the minor details. The characters are perfectly drawn, but in a flashy, superficial and unambiguous way. And so, despite the excellent performances from Keitel and De Niro (then wiry and kinetic youths!), Charlie and Johnny Boy are just too one-dimensional for an audience to really care about.

What Mean Streets ultimately shows us is that while Scorsese had all the right technical ingrediants to make a masterpiece, Mean Streets wasn't one. Those came later.

Reviewed by Monika Maurer