HBO’s hit crime drama TV show Boardwalk Empire is the quintessential show about the Roaring Twenties & the Prohibition era in America. The show depicts a handful of prominent gangsters and bootleggers who made vast, extensive empires for themselves by bootlegging liquor across America during the 1920s & 1930s.
While everyone may remember the glitz and glamour of that era, the enormous amounts of money these gangsters made and the crimes they had to resort to in order to defend their territory are also a significant part of American history.
Boardwalk Empire follows Enoch "Nucky" Thompson (Steve Buscemi), the linchpin of Atlantic City during the Prohibition era. It also depicts several other prominent gangsters like Al Capone, Arnold Rothstein, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Joe Masseria, Salvatore Maranzano, among others who rose to power and notoriety during those years.
The series, created by Terence Winter, has gone on to receive wide acclaim and has won over ardent fans across the world.
Boardwalk Empire is produced by Martin Scorsese and Mark Wahlberg, among others; Scorsese also directed the pilot, and given his explorations and the films he’s made in the crime/gangster genre over the years, the show has some iconic scenes that make for a riveting watching experience.
Here are the top ten scenes that defined Boardwalk Empire.
10 Frank Capone Dies In A Shootout
This scene depicts the death of Al Capone’s brother, Frank Capone. Capone is gruesomely shot in a shootout after a riot breaks out; the scene is a fictionalized account based on the actual true story behind his death during the 1924 election. Things begin with Al (Stephen Graham), Frank (Morgan Spector) & Nelson Van Alden (Michael Shannon) trying to influence the upcoming elections in Cicero, Illinois by sending out a large posse of their thugs all armed with weapons, trying to get voters to vote for the candidate that’s paying them.
Al's hot-headedness and short temper leads to the factory workers then attacking the Capone brothers, Van Alden & their men as a mass riot breaks out in the area. A massive brawl ensues, and Van Alden then raises his gun to kill Al as he sees him lying on the ground hurt and bleeding, but Frank catches Van Alden in the act and reaches into his coat to pull out a pistol.
All of a sudden, a large group of the Chicago Police dressed as ordinary citizens enter the fray and immediately gun down Frank Capone with multiple gunshots. Al calls out, “Frank!” but can do nothing as he watches his brother die right in front of his eyes.
9 Owen Returns Dead In A Box
Owen Sleater (Charlie Cox) is appointed by Nucky as one of his trusted right-hand men. But the Irish immigrant soon proceeds to develop a relationship with Nucky’s wife Margaret (Kelly Macdonald) with whom he ends up having an affair. Sleater then tries to kill Joe Masseria (Ivo Nandi) in a planned hit on the Italian mobster in a Turkish bath.
However, Masseria gets tipped off about the hit and gets his men to kill Sleater instead. Masseria and his men then send Sleater’s corpse in a large wooden box back to Nucky, who receives the box in the middle of the night. After his helper Eddie wakes him up, they proceed to open the box, only to find Sleater dead inside. Margaret wakes up too & then peers into the box only to see her lover dead and covered in blood. Distraught, she begins to cry and become hysterical as her husband attempts to console her.
It shows the affection she had for Sleater despite being married to Nucky, and it's events like these that eventually lead to her leaving Nucky in the final season of the show.
8 Rosetti Checks Out
Gyp Rosetti (Bobby Cannavale) is the main volatile, deadly antagonist in Season 3 of the show. After a longstanding feud with Nucky where a lot of Nucky’s men are killed by Rosetti and his gang, Nucky then makes a deal with Rosetti and Masseria’s ally Tonino Sandrelli (Chris Caldovino). Nucky spares Sandrelli's life, under the condition that he must kill Rosetti.
Rosetti goes on the run after his entire operation in Atlantic City goes bust, hitting the road with Sandrelli and some guards. While he plans to start over and re-establish his business by heading west, he stops on a beach to relieve himself as he comically and rather arrogantly explains his plans to his crew. He then begins to sing a song about a 1920s American comic book character named Barney Google.
As he sings the song while relieving himself on the beach, Sandrelli stabs him in the back and then in the chest; Rosetti begins to bleed from the mouth and then falls to the ground, dying immediately.
7 Masseria’s Men Are Ambushed
One of the most compelling and explosive shootout scenes in the show is when Masseria’s entire liquor shipment gets ambushed in the woods. Masseria’s shipment is on the road, but is hijacked by a combination of Al Capone and Chalky White’s men. The gunfire ensues from both sides of the road as Masseria’s entire crew in their vehicles are massacred.
The scene is shot extravagantly well, with shots of Capone ruthlessly firing a machine gun and gunfire from either side of the narrow road. After Masseria’s boys are all dead, Capone and Chalky greet each other, as Capone smokes a cigar and says, “Back to Chicago”.
The scene has interesting cinematography, color grading, and scale and is a memorable shootout on the show. It's a brief but brilliantly shot scene, and is one of the most well-captured shootouts with one of the highest body counts, despite being rather short.
6 Nucky Kills Jimmy Darmody
Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt) vies to follow in Nucky’s footsteps as his protégé and ally in the first season of the show. However, in the second season Luciano, Lansky & Capone ask and then persuade Jimmy to kill Nucky. Jimmy reluctantly agrees; however, he fails in his attempt to kill the Atlantic City boss and Nucky ends up surviving. Soon after, Nucky foils Jimmy’s plans to distribute liquor by sending his understudy Owen Sleater to blow up Jimmy’s liquor warehouse.
Jimmy soon finds himself without liquor to pay off his debts and meets Nucky unarmed as he’s lured by his accomplice Manny Horvitz (William Forsythe) into a trap where Nucky, Sleater & Nucky’s brother Eli (Shia Wigham) have him surrounded. He then knows he’s about to be killed and proceeds to tell Nucky how he truly died (on the inside) in the war. Nucky holds up his pistol aimed at Jimmy getting slightly emotional as he reminds him that they could have prospered together had he not tried to kill Nucky. However, he is merciless in the end, and shoots Jimmy twice, telling the dying man, "I'm not looking for forgiveness."
5 Al Capone Does Cocaine & Goes Berserk With A Tommy Gun
A scene that exemplifies Capone's portrayal in Boardwalk Empire is when he’s on the road with Nelson Van Alden and his brother Frank. Capone snorts some cocaine, saying “(It) beats my wife’s coffee, I’ll tell you that much” as he tells Van Alden to take the wheel. Capone then asks Van Alden to work for him instead of O’Banion.
Suddenly, they hear someone shouting from the back of the truck, so they stop the vehicle as Frank hands Al his Tommy Gun. One of O’Banion’s men emerges from the back of the vehicle saying that he fell asleep. Frank and Al give the stranger 10 seconds to get out of their sight holding him at gunpoint and start to count down from 10.
Al then turns to Van Alden and urges him to shoot O’Banion’s man as he’s running through the woods. Van Alden shoots at the stowaway, but his gun runs out of bullets. Al then takes matters into his own hands and goes crazy with his Tommy Gun, shooting O’Banion’s man with a flurry of bullets shouting “Woo!” as he kills him, then laughs cynically after.
4 Richard Harrow Wipes The House Clean
Richard Harrow (Jack Huston), the disfigured war veteran, is tasked with killing Gyp Rosetti’s men at the gangster’s mansion in order to rescue Tommy Darmody who Rosetti has taken hostage. Rosetti proceeds to take advantage of Gillian Darmody (Gretchen Mol) and later injects her with heroin. However, Harrow enters the mansion suddenly, armed with numerous guns, and begins taking out Rosetti’s men one by one.
He embodies an ice-cold killer as he makes his way through the mansion, killing all of Rosetti’s thugs while Rosetti narrowly escapes and flees in a car. After shooting everybody in the hall, Harrow then makes his way up the stairs where he kills the remaining survivors. Another victim on the upper level is killed after a bit of a struggle, and Harrow then makes his way to the room where Tommy is being held & asks the child to close his eyes as he takes out Rosetti's man who has a gun to Tommy's head.
The entire sequence showcases Harrow’s deadly assassination capabilities apart from his proficiency with a sniper rifle. It's a scene that's as violent as it is bloody, which is just what you can expect from a Scorsese production.
3 The Gangster Peace Meeting
In this particular scene, all the prominent gangsters and main characters of the show meet to settle their discrepancies with each other. Nucky has been having trouble with Joe Masseria and Lucky Luciano (Vincent Piazza) who works with his Italian counterpart, while Meyer Lanksy (Anatol Yusef) who is with New York’s Arnold Rothstein (Michael Stuhlbarg) are also caught in the mix because of Masseria and Nucky’s feud.
Nucky calls them all to Atlantic City to convene for a meeting and says that he wants peace. He proceeds to pay Masseria a large sum of money in a suitcase as a token to make up for the killing of Masseria’s men. Nucky also does Rothstein a favor and connects him to someone for more business. All parties and attendees of the meeting then agree to work out their problems and decide to keep the peace after the meeting concludes. It's a pivotal scene and a rare instance of all the main gangsters on the show meeting together under one roof and being shot on camera in one room.
2 Luciano Clips Masseria
In this scene, Lucky Luciano sits down with his boss Joe Masseria to discuss business. Masseria reminds Luciano that he came to America with nothing as a 16-year-old and had to fight his way to the top. Luciano reiterates that he’s been loyal to Masseria all along and offers to settle all of Masseria’s disputes with Salvatore Maranzano. But Masseria tells Luciano in Italian to “f**k Maranzano” and that he’s the only “one boss”.
However, Luciano has other plans and asks Masseria to excuse him while he goes to relieve himself in the restroom nearby. As the camera cuts to shots of Luciano opening the tap on the sink, Luciano’s men enter the place and gun down Masseria. The camera then cuts to shots of Masseria's dead body as Luciano whispers in Italian that “the fight is over”.
1 Nucky & Margaret’s Final Dance
Margaret leaves Nucky eventually because she’s tired of all his business and politics and all the violence that it involves. She shifts to New York and takes up a regular job working on Wall Street. Nucky then helps Margaret with a stock tip that makes her a little over $28,000. Nucky still loves Margaret and buys her a lavish apartment in New York City so that she’s happy and well-settled.
After meeting again and discussing a bit about their lives, Nucky says, “We danced once,” and the scene then cuts to shots of Nucky dancing with Margaret in an intimate moment as some 30s music plays in the background. They dance romantically for some time but are interrupted by a real estate agent and his prospective buyers who are looking at the apartment.
It’s a touching scene and moment in the final season of the show before Nucky eventually gets killed.