Rating: Summary: Interesting Cast Terribly Wasted in Banal Story Review: If you have seen "The Basketball Diaries" starring Leonardo DiCaprio (and Mark Wahlberg aka "Marky Mark"), and imagine the storyline like "West Side Stories," then you get the rough idea of what "Deuces Wild" could be. You get an impressive cast showing good acting, and awfully flashy camerawork, given by the director Scott Calvert, hwo came back to the job of directing a feature film after 7 years of his previous "The Basketball Diaries." The film, which in itself is nothing original, tells a story set in 1958, but the more important is the cast. Two groups are fighting over the blocks of Brooklyn, New York: they are Deuces and Vipers. The leader of "Deuces" Leon is played by Stephen Dorff while Brad Renfro is his younger brother Bobby, who falls in love with a girl (whose brother happens to belong to the enemy group Vipers ... sound familiar?). Vipers' leader has been doing time in jail, but now he is coming back as Norman Reedus, who happens to be Leon's ex-sweetheart. Now you know what is going to happen on the street, festival at night, and the like. And you will be watching that all the grown-up females (including Deborah Harry of Blondie) are either drunk or listening to Christmas songs (in summer); and Matt Dillon, directly from his days of "Rumblefish" made 20 years ago, is still playing a local mobster. The last thing makes me sad. Sure, it's fight after fight, using knuckles and blocks and blades, and you know in the end somebody must be gunned down. It is regrettable that this banal story tends to obscure the fact that production designs re-creating the streets of New York in the 1950s deserve much praise. Even though the soundtrack music is just a bunch of usual line-ups (like Dion and the Belmonts), the film surely gives some atmosphere that is lost forever. Except for the merit I mentioned last above, however, "Deuces Wild" is a hugely disappointing piece of work, and director Calvert's MTV-like showy camera, which clearly betrays his origin, is doing great harm to the materials which are good in themselves. After all, he is guilty of turning Jim Carrol's rather poetic nature of the original book into a terribly dismal account of a drug-addict in "The Basketball Diaries." So, what can we expect?
Rating: Summary: "Gangs Of New York" Review: My father was a gang member in 1956 Queens, New York. He told me stories about Zipguns and bats he used for protection. He also told me how realistic this movie was just by taking a look at the way the gang members wore their belts. The belt buckle was always worn just above the left front pocket! I wish I could have been there to back my father up! Forget about Hollywood's Outsiders & Rumble Fish brat pack, that was fictional bull! Also recommend Blackboard Jungle.
Rating: Summary: An Underrated Film Review: My favorite movie of 2002. I wrote Norman Reddus and told him he did a great job as Marco and he wrote me back...Cool guy. Great Flick
Rating: Summary: WEST UNION CITY 510 Review: ONE OF THE BEST TEEN-GANG MOVIEZ I HAVE EVER SEEN. THIS MOVIE IZ TIGHT!GREAT ACTING,DERICTING,AND WRITING. A GREAT SOUNDTRACK AND NICE CARS.THIS MOVIE Z GREAT IT SHOWS THE LIFE OF TEENAGERS IN BROOKLYN,NEWYORK TEEN GANGSTER.
Rating: Summary: bland nostalgia trip Review: Only those nostalgic for nostalgia are likely to be very impressed by "Deuces Wild," a film that seems somehow more attuned to the '50's-crazed 1970's - a time when popular culture was embracing backward-looking fare like "American Graffiti" and "Happy Days" - than to the era in which it is actually set. That happens to be Brooklyn in the summer of 1958, when the streets were overrun with denim- and leather-clad hoodlums who smoked cigarettes, drove cool cars, and strutted around looking for fights to protect or extend their seemingly God-given "turf." "Deuces Wild" feels like it is about 25 years out of date, especially since it adds nothing new to a well-worn genre that can pinpoint its beginnings as far back as 1961's magnificent "West Side Story." In fact, this is little more than "West Side Story" sans the music and dancing. Although the Jets and the Sharks have been replaced by the Deuces and the Vipers, we still have all the other elements from that earlier, better film: the challenges, the rumbles, the ineffectual and almost nonexistent parents, even a pair of lovers from opposite gangs caught in the inter-neighborhood warfare. The boys are utterly interchangeable and indistinguishable from one another, the dysfunctional parents beyond belief (one mother is so far gone mentally that she celebrates Christmas all year round and even believes in the existence of Santa Claus), and the action so pretentiously filmed that half of the dramatic scenes come replete with studio-generated thunder and lightning designed to lend tragic "significance" to what is, essentially, pretty silly, garden-variety hooliganism. The closing rumble scene is so confusingly shot and edited that it takes the voiceover narration to straighten out for us who got killed and who didn't. The cast of mostly youthful actors does its best with shallow, stereotypical roles, but one should at least pity poor Frankie Muniz, that charming young star of TV's "Malcolm in the Middle," who delivers a surprisingly dorky performance in the extremely sketchy and underwritten part of Scooch, the neighborhood "good kid" whom Leon, the Deuces' leader, takes under his wing. Hopefully, Muniz' film career will get better from here on out. About the best one can say for "Deuces Wild" is that it is one hell of a good-looking film, thanks to John A. Alonzo's rich cinematography, which enhances the film's fine period décor. A pity that little else about the film merits similar commendation.
Rating: Summary: Deuces Wild Review: Since I'm an avid fan of [Italian] movies, this was a HIT! This movie was a combo of "Outsiders" w/a little bit of "West Side Story" and those are MY kinda movies! From the opening scene with music from Dion, to the sweet attempts made to impress a girl, to the action-packed, jaw-dropping realistic fights, I rate this movie with five stars. The cast did an excellent job realistically depicting the tough gang life of a kid in the late fifties in NYC. And casting "Big Pussy" as a priest, well that ALONE was enough to entice me! If you like a fifties setting, w/Italians from the tough streets of Brooklyn, mixed with a lot of rumbles and some romance, you're gonna love it!
Rating: Summary: Terrible! Cliche' City Review: Stephen Dorff has outdone himself again with the bad movies. DW was full of tired cliches'. There wasn't one thing they said or did in this film that hasn't happened a thousand times before. I was terribly disappointed and mad I bought this dumb movie. And I'm a Stephen Dorff fan. Just when I thought it was safe to watch another Dorff flick... Save your time and change. If you have to see this movie wait until it comes on television. This is one of the worst movies of the season. Instead of passing on Blade 2, Stephen Dorff should have thrown his DW script in the trash. If you're into fake thugs, boring sex scenes, bad acting blonds, and ignorant mob bosses, Deuces Wild is for you. But if you want to see this film with class, rent " Grease ", " Rebel Without A Clause ". Any good film that brought leather jacket wearing people to an entertaining level. But skip this junk!
Rating: Summary: good Gang/Crime flick but not for everyone Review: The only reason I'm not giving this a five is because it had a practically non-existant soundtrack. The film reminded me a lot of "A Bronx Tale" not in plot, but in storytelling style. Despite everyone saying that they would rather have their face bounced off of a telephone pole rather than wacth this, I found it to be better than what the critics said. In any case, rent it first.
Rating: Summary: Very Bad Movie Review: There really isn't anything in this movie that was done right. At first, the soundtrack was so bad it distracted me from the movie. When I did pay attention I saw a big mess of bad directing and acting. Even if everything was done right the terrible script would still have kept this movie from being enjoyable. The excessive violence and yelling did not work well at all. The dramatic scenes made me laugh instead of feel emotional. The cheesy camera shots and effects also distracted from the dramatic scenes. The list can go on. This movie should not have been made.
Rating: Summary: Excellent - A Pure Film Review: This film doesn't need special effects to be entertaining. It was filmed extremely well and was thoroughly enjoyable.
|