'3 Black Chicks Review...'
PRICE OF GLORY (2000) Rated PG13; running time 117 minutes Genre: Drama IMDB site: http://us.imdb.com/Details?0188160 Official site: http://www.priceofglory.com/ Written by: Phil Berger Directed by: Carlos Avila Starring: Jimmy Smits, Jon Seda, Clifton Collins, Jr., Maria del Mar, Sal Lopez (Hector Salmon), Louis Mandylor, Danielle Camastra, Ernesto Hernandez, Paul Rodriguez, Ron Perlman
Review Copyright Rose Cooper, 2000 Review URL: http://www.3blackchicks.com/bamsprice.html
I went in to see PRICE OF GLORY with a slight sense of dread: after being upset for so long about the havoc Jon Seda's character Falsone wreaked on TV's HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET (RIP), I was sure that his character here would just overwhelm everyone else, leaving me with a bad Seda taste in my mouth once again. Boy, was I wrong--in more ways than one.
The Story (WARNING: **spoilers contained below**): Arizona-based Arturo Ortega (Jimmy Smits) coulda been a contenda--until his opponent opened up a can of whupass on him in a 1977 boxing match.
13 years later, Arturo starts to live out his dream of boxing glory through his young sons Sonny and Jimmy, both of whom he trains in a Mariposa, Arizona gym. Sonny is the more skilled of the two brothers--something that Arturo never lets Jimmy forget--but when Sonny and Jimmy do relatively badly at a Silver Gloves tournament, their youngest brother Johnny surprises the whole Ortega crew by announcing that he's ready to give up street football to become a boxer, saying "them two stunk!"
10 years later...17-year-old Johnny (Ernesto Hernandez) intensely prepares for his Golden Gloves tournament, and catches the eye of boxing scout Pepe (Paul Rodriguez) and promoter Nick Everson (Ron Perlman); Everson approaches Arturo with the offer to "relieve" him of his managing duties for Sonny (Jon Seda) and Jimmy (Clifton Collins, Jr.), "throwing in" Johnny for good measure. But Arturo has his eyes on the prize--the glory days he sees ahead. The question is, is it glory for them--or for him?
The Upshot: There's a point in this movie where it went from being enjoyable in its look at family dynamics from a Latino point of view that is usually not seen in mainstream Hollywood, to being a candidate for TV Movie-Of-The-Week. I can't quite pinpoint where PRICE OF GLORY lost its slight edge, but it's there. Maybe I blinked, and it was gone. Or maybe I was just so thrilled to see so many Mexican-Americans portrayed on the Silver Screen without the stereotypically scripted behavior we've come to expect, that I didn't notice the lack of depth all along. And that, not my assumption of what Seda would be like, is what left me wanting more from this movie than it was prepared to deliver.
Early on, though, there were winning performances; Seda, in particular, surprised me with his relatively muted turn as Sonny (if you've ever watched him chewing the scenery in "Homicide", you'll know why I was surprised). His acting here was aided, no doubt, by the fact that he once was a Golden Gloves boxer himself; he definitely looked comfortable on the body bag. Equally good in the early stages was Clifton Collins as the put-upon Jimmy, and Maria del Mar as Arturo's wife Rita; I cheered when seeing the interaction between Arturo and his wife, as they looked genuinely attracted to each other, and dedicated (in different ways) to their sons. And in his feature film debut, Ernesto Hernandez's Johnny Ortega didn't quite give an Oscar-worthy performance, but he had his Intense Scowl look down-pat.
On the other side of the ring, Ron Perlman was never convincing as a boxing promoter; about the only thing he could've promoted was a bout of sleep. I never did figure out what purpose Danielle Camastra's character Mariella served; a throwaway role if I ever saw one, her introduction to Arturo as Sonny's girlfriend served its purpose sufficiently enough, without the need to have her stand around looking Sad in the background, taking up frames of film. And maybe it was Just Me, but Louis Mandylor just did not look like he belonged in a boxing ring, though his turn as the rather mean-spirited Davey Lane did seem to serve as a needed bit of conflict and tension that was missing from most of the movie. After all, what's a title bout without someone talking trash?
Above all, Jimmy Smits gives a winning performance as patriarch Arturo Ortega. At times funny (his Thanksgiving prayer and insistence on getting a rad green Cadillac convertible, made me laugh out loud), and at other times pensive and sad, Smits showed a side of his acting abilities that wasn't allowed to come to the fore nearly enough during his NYPD-BLUE days.
So why did PRICE OF GLORY fall so flat? Beats me; maybe it developed wobbly knees from going a round or two too long, and collapsed under the weight of Delivering A Message. The editor could have easily excised a half-hour or so with no ill-effects, giving it a tighter focus and less repetition on the theme. Certainly, they could've lost the irritating Paul Rodriguez in a pile of film in the trash dump; he used up his 15 Minutes a lifetime ago.
In the end, there just didn't seem enough there to rally around; by the time the Obligatory Title Match came around, enough of the outcome had been telegraphed beforehand to make the results all but assured, and frankly, by that point, The Point had already been made. And though the movie seemed authentic on the boxing front, from both the writer's standpoint as well as the cinematographer's great shots of the pugilistic action--one in particular, with young Arturo hitting the canvas, tore right through me, it seemed just that real--the spirit seemed to drain out of the movie as it rolled on. What had started out as a fun flick, with great Latin sounds and interesting characters, wound up as worthy of being a TV Afternoon Special.
Bammer's Bottom Line: I wanted to give this one a higher rating, but story-wise, it's more suited to a cable TV movie than a feature film release. Still, Smits shows he's got the nalgas to carry a motion picture on his own - if Hollywood opens the door for him. Hmmm...I wonder if I should hold my breath...
PRICE OF GLORY (rating: yellowlight): More a glancing blow than a knockout, it still gets props for what it *didn't* show: stereotypical Latinos, Hollywood-style. That's worth at least an extra point or two on my scorecard.
3 Black Chicks...Movie Reviews With Flava! /~\ Rose "Bams" Cooper /','\ 3BlackChicks Enterprises /','`'\ Copyright Rose Cooper, 2000 /',',','/`, EMAIL: bams@3blackchicks.com ICQ: 7760005 `~-._'c / http://www.3blackchicks.com/ `\ ( http://www.evenbetter.com/?partner=1987 /====\
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