Most critics like Bugsy, and they like it for the same reasons: Warren Beatty’s performance and the 1940s gloss. The reviews describe a smooth, romantic gangster picture that is lighter on its feet than most big studio films, with Beatty cast as a charming, dangerous dreamer whose scheme for Las Vegas is treated as a fable of the American dream. Barry Levinson’s direction and James Toback’s script both draw praise, as does the supporting cast, with Ben Kingsley’s Meyer Lansky singled out more than once.
The reservations cluster around how kindly the film treats a violent man. Time Out is sceptical of the sympathetic portrait, and The Independent, the one mixed notice, finds it gripping but an unsatisfactory mix of comedy, tragedy and love story. Variety thinks the central romance is the weak point, with Virginia Hill written as one-dimensional. The spread is narrow; nobody dislikes it, and the argument is about whether the polish flatters its subject too much.