Publication Date: 12-15-2025

Bullets Over Broadway (1994) review

Dir. Woody Allen

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★½

Remembering Rob Reiner

1947 – 2025

The year is 1928. David Shayne (John Cusack) is an idealistic young playwright with big dreams upon his arrival to Broadway with his screenplay in tow. David underestimates the difficultly he’ll have in getting his passion-project, titled “God of Our Fathers,” made, and grows even more weary when one of his financiers suggests securing the bulk of the money from the mob – with the added condition of casting Olive Neal (Jennifer Tilly), one of the gangster’s girlfriends as one of the more pivotal roles in the story.

David is initially dismayed, but goes along with it. This becomes a running theme as his plan continues to be dictated by the likes of the talentless Olive, who has a problem reciting lines and can’t grasp a single metaphor, as well as Cheech (Chazz Palminteri), the bruiser who frequently accompanies her. David’s obsession with trying to get his play off of the ground also takes away from his relationship with Ellen (Mary-Louise Parker), prompting him to cheat with the seductive Helen Sinclair (Dianne Wiest), the lead actress in his play.

A recurring theme for much of the first half is a frustrated David being brought even more stress upon Olive’s incompetence and repeated criticism of the play’s premise. This criticism is echoed by Cheech, who sits several rows back in the audience during many rehearsals, offering unwarranted suggestions and nitpicks in the way of character dynamics and dialog. After David initially quits the play in an insulted haste, he sits with Cheech, in not only one of the film’s best scenes but perhaps one of Allen’s best scenes ever, in a bar where the two indulge one another about their process and Cheech reveals himself to be more eloquent than David thought. The rapport between the two men is strong, as both Cusack and Palminteri can effortlessly craft and maintain a conversational aura because both have such a natural on-screen presence. It takes only a few words of affirmation and a big stink of desperation for David to agree to have the ethics of his play compromised by having Cheech ghostwrite the holes in his story.

Bullets over Broadway is an upbeat film given the story, something Woody Allen artfully disguises as he buries the grit of a gangster premise underneath a contemplative look at the creative process and a playwright’s diminishing self-confidence. The film works as a nice companion to Crimes and Misdemeanors thanks to its comically inclined story revolving around deception and murder, but at the same time, I dare say I found Bullets to be funnier. It’s comprised of one of the best casts Allen has ever assembled and echoes a time when Allen films felt like events simply for who Allen cast as the leading role and what immediate supporting pieces surrounded said actor.

Cusack is a tremendous Allen archetype, playing the neurotic sensibilities typical of the character without straining for the over-the-top qualities with which Allen sometimes becomes too consumed. The more intangibles and emotions you pile onto Cusack’s character, as an actor, the better he handles the convictions of his roles, which is why he was such a presence in High Fidelity and Serendipity. Once again, to be assisted by Palminteri (A Bronx Tale) is something just about every actor could want, and the two evoke their natural sides when nudged into conversation with one another. On top of the aforementioned bar scene, another great moment of combative energy comes when David storms in the pool-hall to confront Cheech only for Cheech, in the middle of a solo game of billiards, to snatch the pages of the play’s script out of David’s hand to sit down and make adjustments to the dialog with a pen. The sequence, like many involving one or both of the men, fires off with a great burst of energy.

Despite the raving comments about Dianne Wiest’s performance, I’m more inclined to give the often unsung Jennifer Tilly some praise. Her character rubbed me as a potentially misunderstood, underestimated heroine for the early part of the film, and I suspect that’s not a trait off-base as to what Allen might have wanted his audience to feel. David might not give her a big enough margin for success when compared to the margin of error he has, but she earned my benefit of the doubt until she slowly devolved into a contemptible character victim to her own lack of talent as well as her absent desire to improve or commit. Tilly is a lovely actress and never does this role escape her as someone who is hopefully unlikable from the start; she treats the performance with a gradual revelation for the audience that her character is unfit for acting outside of maybe a commercial. The core performers of the film (Cusack, Palminteri, Wiest, Tilly, and Jim Broadbent) carry a thespian weight to them, complimenting the stageplay environment inherent to the script.

The 1920s – 1940s is a period of time in which Allen functions very well, and the costume design in Bullets over Broadway is elegantly employed against a flapper-era gangster story. Humorously enough, the era is so far removed from the time in which the film was actually made – the mid-nineties – and that’s a period where Allen films have me at my most ignorant. Bullets over Broadway, however, helps me suggest an identity for Allen’s eclectic 1990s filmography I previously lacked. Between this, Mighty Aphrodite, and Manhattan Murder Mystery, it’s as if Allen took this decade to illustrate darker, more serious stories told with a delightful sense of comedy. This and Manhattan Murder Mystery serve as some of his funniest works, and they also follow his intensely dramatic period by proving that he has poise and precision for a different breed of comedy that’s not slapsticky like Broadway Danny Rose or hyper-specific like Love and Death. Bullets over Broadway is not only one of Allen’s funniest, most rewarding ensembles, it’s also a defining moment in his 1990s filmography.

Starring: John Cusack, Chazz Palminteri, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Tilly, Jim Broadbent, Rob Reiner, and Tracy Ullman. Directed by: Woody Allen.