Honestly, you rat on the mob and another member of the mob asks you to go for a ride and you say you love riding in the night air? The underrated Joe Mantagna as just "George". Elliott Gould as the hapless Harry Greenburg. In spite of being a Best Actor Oscar winner, that honor never really paid off for him in break-out roles. Other interesting performances - Ben Kingsley as the low key Meyer Lansky. And she also appears to be the model for the Columbia Lady with a Torch - although everybody denies it in spite of Beatty's heavy investment in Sony/Columbia. She was slated to be Cat Woman in a film the following year, but she managed to do something much more remarkable - actually get Beatty to enter into matrimony - an institution he had skillfully avoided up to that point - in a union that yielded four children. This was a very versatile role for Annette Bening as Hill, and is probably the best thing she ever did. They fight violently, make up violently, and she ultimately gets grabby with the mob money that is the construction funds for the Flamingo.
The other decision he makes that dooms himself is getting involved with Virginia Hill (Annette Bening), a kindred spirit in all the wrong ways. And if they decide to be less than 100% legitimate, he figures controlling the gambling interests in a state where it is legal and at that point - the 1940s - unexploited, he can eventually control the state.
He argues to his mob investors that they can be 100% legitimate. He somewhat dreams of being in pictures and enjoys the glamor of Hollywood, but ultimately dooms himself when he falls in love with an idea - building a casino in the middle of nowhere in Nevada, where prostitution and gambling are legal. So Beatty portrays Ben Siegal as a sociopathic gangster whose curse is that he is a dreamer who is careless with money. When Warren Beatty made a period piece, it usually looked very good, so this was not a surprise. The ballroom scenes and the big bands are all perfect, the automobiles long and shiny. I wish that films actually made in the 1940s looked this good.
This highly fictionalized account of Ben "Bugsy" Siegal's life looks and sounds great.