AMERICAN ME
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
AMERICAN ME is a film by Edward James Olmos. It was written by Floyd Mutrux and Desmond Nakano. It stars Olmos, William Forsythe, Pepe Serna, Evelina Fernandez. It is rated R for scenes of extreme violence.
AMERICAN ME is one of the darkest, grimmest, most unrelenting, and challenging movies I have ever seen. Honestly, I dreaded its start and only went in the first place because Lyndol insisted. And I have to say that I was completely captivated by the honesty and skill in its making. And I also have to say I would never volunteer to sit through it again. As Eliot said, "Humankind cannot stand too much reality."
This is the story of Santana, wonderfully played by Olmos, and of his friends, family, and community in the barrio of East Los Angeles. Santana is a ruthless killer who organizes a gang in Folsom state penitentiary. He convinces himself and others that his purpose is to help his people, but in the end he comes to realize that his real goal was power.
The violence begins with the Zoot Suit Riots of wartime L.A. and continues without intermission to the very end. We are forced to face up to the horrors of rape (man-on-woman and man-on-man), stabbings, stranglings, burning alive, mutilation, and the rest of the catalog. But the violence is all to a single purpose and entirely free of all imputations of exploitation. Olmos sees his movie strictly in didactic terms as a cautionary tale to young Santanas out there today. Olmos wants to show us how desperate the powerless are for respect (a theme that figures in one scene of the diametrically opposite GRAND CANYON, btw). He launches a full-scale assault on the cult of machismo. And he scares the hell of me and depresses me with the hopelessness of the cycle in a way few movies or documentaries have ever reached me.
Olmos achieved his first recognition in the Miami Vice TV series and then with his portrayal of East L.A. math teacher Jaime Escalante in STAND AND DELIVER, which role earned him an Oscar nomination. Olmos is a powerful performer, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Humphrey Bogart in his acne-pitted and scarred face and his style of acting.
The ensemble acting by the mostly unfamiliar ethic performers is fresh, original, and forceful. Especially to be commended are William Forsythe as JD and Pepe Serna as Mundo, Santana's closest henchmen, and Evelina Fernandez as the woman who sees most clearly who Santana is.
I can also recommend the editing of AMERICAN ME, which at times created in me an almost unbearable tension, as in a sequence that cuts between Santana on the outside on his first romantic encounter and a group of inmates on the inside moving along to a nearly unsupportable and horrifying climax that is simultaneously echoed to only a slighter degree on the outside. If it helps, you might try focusing on the technical excellence of this film, which is first rate.
I recommend AMERICAN ME to you. (The title is drawn from Beatrice Griffith's 1947 study of Mexican-American "Pachuco" culture.) The movie will rattle your cage, disturb your sureties, and reward you with a rare, if harrowing, movie experience of real substance. But be warned: "Abandon all hope," etc.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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