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Raymond De Felitta considers the Mafia “a dead issue,” as filmmaking goes. Who can out-do “The Godfather” and “GoodFellas”? The film director found a way not to outdo those movies, but to end-run them: by making “an anti-mob movie,” “Rob the Mob.”

“It’s a mob movie without being a mob movie,” De Felitta said in a phone interview. “The mob are sort of the victims. It’s a cool twist on the genre. You haven’t seen the Mafia like this, powerless and little bit befuddled, not sure how to act. They’ve lost their mojo.”

De Felitta will bring “Rob the Mob” to the Ridgefield Playhouse on Saturday, May 23. He will do a Q&A after the film.

The 2014 movie is based on a series of events that happened in New York City in 1991. It tells the story of Tommy Uva and Rosie DeToma (Michael Pitt and Nina Arianda), a cash-strapped couple who decide to stick up Mafiosos in their private social clubs, because gangsters have lots of money and never call the cops. During their small-time crime spree, they score a big-time piece of information that police had been seeking for years.

De Felitta said he does not see Tommy and Rosie as heroes, but just fools who stumbled into a historic circumstance.

“Sometimes fools achieve something that is larger than them. They had no intention of achieving that. To set out to seriously hurt the Mafia … was not something that ever occurred to them. They just thought they’d score a few thousand bucks,” he said. “But the fact is that they just bumbled the way to helping history along. I guess I could call them accidental heroes.”

De Felitta said his next project, which begins production in three weeks, is the ABC miniseries about disgraced financier Bernie Madoff starring Richard Dreyfuss.

“Rob the Mob” also stars Andy Garcia, Ray Romano, Cathy Moriarty and Griffin Dunne. Showtime is at 7:30 p.m. at the playhouse at 80 East Ridge Ave. Admission is $10, $7.50 seniors, $5 students. The movie is rated R. ridgefieldplayhouse.org.