Help me identify another movie (or the novel it was based on)

Cafe Society
1

I saw this one on Russian TV in the late '80s. It was a Soviet production, but it was set in the USA (New York City, IIRC). I’m pretty sure it was either (a) a remake of an American movie or (b) based on a novel by an American author.

Scenario: A Vietnam vet, possibly dying from Agent Orange, puts together a gang of four or five for a big heist on the waterfront. They meet for the first time in some run-down shed or warehouse, and he introduces them one by one. The only gangster whose name I can remember was called “Gyppo.” I think they had all served together in Vietnam.

And that’s about all I know, since it was in the form of a serial and I only saw the first episode or two. I do remember it opened with a shot of an “American” police car parked in front of a house in a working-class neighborhood. The cops were probably there to talk to the leader of the gang because they suspected him of another crime.

To be clear, this was NOT a remake of Reservoir Dogs. It came out long before Tarantino had even made his mark in Hollywood.

2

I’m drawing a blank.

Dead Presidents is to recent.
Ocean’s 11 is too old.
Seven Thieves, is too old, and doesn’t have the military angle.
The League of Gentlemen is too old, and set in the wrong country.

3

Do the Russians go in for “re-imagining”?

Would they take a story about WW2 veterans, and bump it up a couple of decades?
Or take a British story, and transplant it to the U.S.?

4

I think I’ve found it. I did a search with Джиппо (“Gyppo” in Russian) and came up with this:

Мираж (фильм, 1983) — Википедия

The Russian title is Mirage and it’s based on the 1959 novel The World in My Pocket by British writer James Hadley Chase. In a nutshell, a woman who can’t cash in on her father’s life insurance because he committed suicide turns to a professional criminal to knock off an armored car carrying $3 million. The heist goes down, but everything rapidly turns to shit and everybody’s dead by the end. Bummer! :frowning: