10 Bad Dates With De Niro

"Robert De Niro is exceptional amongst A-list movie stars, in that he could never be thought of as a romantic lead. His characters tend to live amongst men, often as gangsters, or alone, inside their own heads. And when they try to love, they are clueless and cruel. Watch De Niro try to kiss a woman—and it always looks like an effort—in any of his movies: he fumbles, unsure, before hoovering up their faces. It's not a pretty sight.
Sometimes I think this is wholly deliberate: De Niro is, after all, a fabulous comedian. At the same time, it could well be that a reticent man is attracted instinctively to characters with an innate inability to connect....
The order is informed by the level of violence, but also by how important the victim is, supposedly, to De Niro's character. My top spot may seem occupied by the least heinous act of all, but it reflects the essential isolation that informs De Niro's monstrously bad boyfriends."
—Demetrios Matheou, in 10 Bad Dates with De Niro (2007).