A BRONX TALE
A film review by Chuck Dowling
Copyright 1997 Chuck Dowling
A Bronx Tale (1993) ***** out of ***** - C:Robert De Niro, Chazz Palminteri, Francis Capra, Lillo Brancato.
"A Bronx Tale" marks the directorial debut of Robert De Niro, who is in my opinion, the finest actor working today. And if his next directing effort is as good as this one, he'll be one of the finest directors as well.
The story involves a impressionable young man, Calogero, who grows up during the 60s in the Bronx, under two different influences. One is the neighborhood gangster, Sonny (Palminteri), and the other is his bus driver father, Lorenzo (De Niro). De Niro was very wise to play the role of Lorenzo instead of playing Sonny, as most would have expected him to do.
Lorenzo tries to protect his family and teaches his son how to stay safe in the outside world. It is a difficult task, however, as Calogero learns that just being seen with the most popular guy in town brings respect and gifts. Lorenzo tells his son that the only reason Sonny is in the position that he's in is because he is feared by the neighborhood, not loved.
On the other hand, Sonny steers Calogero away from the life and dangers of organized crime, and warns him to avoid the immature behavior of other boys in the neighborhood who think that they soon will be gangsters too.
To complicate matters further, Calogero falls for a very respectable black girl in a world where the Italian and black cultures do not interact. Both Sonny and Lorenzo have mixed feelings about the subject, making Calogero's life choices even more difficult.
Palminteri's script is on a completely different level from most gangster films, offering much, much more than just crime and bloodshed. The characters are very human, very believable, and therefore, very compelling to watch. The actors, most of whom are complete unknowns, do an outstanding job. De Niro's direction is excellent, proving that he has learned much from the great talent he's worked with over the years. He fills the film with details, and a minute into it, the world he has recreated seems perfectly real. Unbelieveably, the film didn't receive a single Oscar nomination, and it should have had many.
-- Chuck Dowling Visit Chuck's Movie Reviews at http://users.southeast.net/~chuckd21/ Over 1,600 movies rated and/or reviewed! Movie news, box office reports, film related links, and reader's polls and reviews.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews