The two friends are played by Joe Piscopo, as Moe Dickstein, and Danny DeVito, as Harry Valentini. They move with easy familiarity through the world of the mob; sometimes the little guys get the best view. They know all about the system of enforcement and discipline and punishment. They know so much, in fact, that when they screw up, when they do something that is very, very bad, they don't even have to be told they're dead. It goes without saying.
Here's what they do. They go to the track with Fixer, the mob's chief enforcer (played by Captain Lou Albano, the gigantic professional wrestler). Their assignment is to place a bet for Tony, the boss (Dan Hedaya). DeVito starts thinking, which is always dangerous. The boss has been betting on the wrong horses for weeks. They could be heroes by placing the money on the nose of the horse that DeVito knows will win. Better still, they could get rich by betting on the winning horse and then letting Fixer and the boss believe the money was lost.
This is a great plan, except this is the one day the boss's horse comes in first, and so DeVito and Piscopo have lost the boss hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is bad. It is so bad that DeVito is plunged into a lobster tank at the restaurant, and Piscopo is suspended over a pit full of attack dogs. Then the boss thinks up their real punishment: He will secretly assign each one to kill the other.
It's here that the movie really gets rolling. The two guys hit the road, looking for safety, looking for a mob elder statesman who can bargain for their safety. And we begin to realize that the movie is filled with an inexhaustible supply of great character actors, that we are going to meet a lot of people in this story, and they are all going to be memorable.
In New Jersey, there was Hedeya as the boss, clean-shaven and slick, and Albano as Fixer, in one of the year's great supporting roles. Then, in Atlantic City, we meet the casino manager, Bobby DiLea, played by the great Harvey Keitel. He doesn't want anyone to get killed in his casino, and once Harry and Moe check into the penthouse suite (using the Fixer's stolen credit card), he knows he is going to have to be very lucky to keep that from happening. Very lucky.
"Wise Guys" is an abundant movie, filled with ideas and gags and great characters. It never runs dry. It never has the desperation of so many gangster comedies, which seem to be marching over the same tired ground. This movie was made with joy, and you can feel it in the sense of all the actors working at the top of their form.
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