I don’t know if the message was crime pays. Yeah they made a lot of money, and had to always fear the cops, and rivals, and even allies. They’re constantly going to jail or getting killed. Especially when you get all the way through season 6, if you take the most common interpretation of the ending then the only survivors from Tony’s mob family are Paulie and Sil, and Sil’s in a coma not expected to recover, and Paulie had done jail time and was now in charge of the “unlucky” crew whose top guy has had a life expectancy of about a year. Really not much pay when you get down to it.
“...Really not much pay when you get down to it....”
Maybe better wording would have been that Hollywood glamorizes it a bit more nowadays.
Same with Public Enemies about Dillinger. They made him out to be some sort of gentleman bandit. Reality is, he was a bit of a mad dog. But yet, he’s portrayed as a hero of sorts.
I don’t know...maybe to some Depression era folks way of thinking, he WAS a hero of sorts.
I just seems that with the older “gangster” movies - the ones that made Edward G. Robinson, Cagney, and Bogart famous - the message was clear; you follow this life and you’re going to wind up dead.
Sopranos, to me, was “You follow this life, you may wind up dead, but you’ll have one helluva ride in the process, so who gives a sh*t...?
Just my 2cents