Brooklyn Rules (2007)

Three lifelong friends grow up in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood. Carmine Mancuso (Scott Caan) is the vain one. Bobby Canzoneri (Jerry Ferrara) is the cheapskate. Michael Turner (Freddie Prinze Jr.) is the scammer. In 1974, the 3 young boys found a dead body in the woods. Carmine took the lighter, Bobby got the dog, and Michael took the gun. Now in 1985, Michael is studying at Columbia Law and getting close to rich fellow student Ellen (Mena Suvari). Bobby is living at home whose biggest dream is a postal job. Carmine is getting in with wise guy Caesar (Alec Baldwin) who is a captain in the Gambino family.This is not as rich as other NY mafia movies. Director Michael Corrente has created a world of clichés and expected characters. The three guys do a reasonable job. They have a good mix of personalities. Alec Baldwin does a very good wise guy. The story just lacks the needed tension. It feels like a thin simple mobster movie.

Brooklyn Rules has a premise that has been done before. Having grown up in Brooklyn and being a fan of Alec Baldwin I took a chance and rented the film. I have to say that I really wanted to enjoy this film as I am a fan of the genre, can relate to the life and am from the same generation as the characters in the film.The storyline is a coming of age story of three friends from Brooklyn. A storyline such as this would rest heavily on crisp direction, a good solid script and the rapport between the three buddies played by Freddie Prinz Jr., Scott Caan and Gerry Ferrara. The rapport and connection just wasn't there. Although individually there were some bright spots, it didn't seem like these guys really knew each other. Their affection seemed forced and false. The contact between the younger actors that played the same characters as school boys at the start of the film was more honest, spontaneous and interesting than their older counterparts. Scott Caan gives a solid and understated performance as the friend who initially seeks his future in the mob life. Gerry Ferrara is fine as the good hearted cheapskate Bobby. As the main character and narrator of the film, Freddie Prinz comes off the weakest of the three with a performance that lacks in energy and played with a very fake accent. The latter sounding like a preppies stereotyped version of a mob/Brooklyn accent. The rapport between Prinz's character and his love interest also suffers in the film. Mena Suvari and Mr. Prinz, both who have turned in much better performances in other films, seemed to be trying desperately to find their way through the awkward dialog and couldn't make it work. The script and the direction, IMHO was the greatest problems with the film. I understood from the DVD interviews that the movie was based on the writers actual life experience. It must have meant a great deal to Mr. Winter to bring this to life. It is most commendable effort, but the dialog is forced, labored and artificial. It needed a great deal of polish to smooth out the rough edges and bring a little more truth, less forced humor and more energy to the story. I'm a fan of many of the films that this movie has spawned from ie. Goodfellas, Bronx Tale and the genres progenitor, Mean Streets. But those films had an energy, truth, humor and spontaneity that this film lacks. Alec Baldwin is as usual fun to watch and one can only wish that we saw more of him and that he didn't die as soon as he did. When Baldwin is no longer in the film it sort of flounders to it's ponderous ending. Gerry Ferrara's last tragic scene is the only moving moment, much in part due to Mr. Ferrara's excellent performance in that scene.The direction was equally awkward and labored and served to make the film a stereotype of the intense and complicated world that takes place on the streets of Brooklyn. It is a shame because the story idea was a good one and could have been served better.

"Brooklyn Rules" is a ho-hum "Goodfellas" knock-off about three lifelong buddies (Freddie Prinze Jr., Scott Caan and Jerry Ferrara) and their involvement with the mafia. After a brief prologue set in 1974, the film moves quickly ahead to1985, where Mikey, Carmine and Bobby, now in their 20's, are attempting to make their way in a world where a mob boss by the name of Caesar Manganaro (Alec Baldwin), rules the streets with an iron fist. Mikey, the film's narrator, is the one most torn between loyalty to the neighborhood and his pals and a desire to experience life beyond this old familiar corner of Brooklyn. Carmine is the hard-nosed tough guy who wants nothing more than to be a card-carrying member of the Manganaro clan.Written by Terence Winter and directed by Michael Corrente, the film indulges in just about every mob-movie cliché one could possibly imagine, topped off by corny narration and banal wise-guy dialogue done in barely comprehensible dese-dem-dose accents. The movie earns a few points for at least trying to create a morally complex character in Mikey (though heavily borrowed from Michael Corleone), but the clichéd storytelling, lackluster performances and dull writing rob the film of most of its impact. There's a decided lack of energy and urgency in the direction as well, making "Brooklyn Rules" a very minor addition to the mob movie genre indeed.

For a movie with so much character focus it's surprising that none of the characters come off the screen (except for Alec Baldwin.) Nor do we care about any of them. The decent moments of this movie try to tug at our hearts, but we don't care because its a tired story with little substance.Freddie Prinze Jr. (Michael) is your average troubled Italian kid cum mob boss in the making. Er... wait. No he's not. That's what the movie we wanted would have presented. The movie starts with a long monologue explaining how growing up in Brooklyn has forced Michael to play by a new set of rules (hence the name). The problem is there's 2 moments in the movie were he even grasps at being a tough guy. In reality he's a quiet college boy who's worst faux pas is cheating on a test in school. What a rebel playing by his own set of rules. Oh wait, that was James Dean. Micheal lives in a world surrounded by wise guys yet he spends the length of the film shunning the world he lives in. Struggling to get out of Brooklyn and away from his stupid friends and the wise guys around the corner. How captivating! Not. Freddie is possibly the worst person to make into a Brooklyn hood. He looks like he popped out of a J. Crew catalog, not from Tony Soprano's Escalade. The action is slow. Which isn't surprising from Terence Winter. It was one of the problems with the Sopranos. At least The Sopranos had good dialog and great actors who absolutely played their parts to perfection. The Sopranos also had good story lines. This movie has none of that.Alec Baldwin is good as always (the little we see him), but his character has little point to the story other than to be the "mob" presence in most of the story line. Baldwin's character seems to represent everything in the movie that we didn't get. The only great parts of this movie have Baldwin doing his best to make something out of nothing and we get very little of that.When the pivotal action finally turns up (and we're begging for it) the movie seems it may become what we wanted it to be. Yet it still just doesn't pay off. It's recycled. We get a few scenes with Alec Baldwin doing the things we want a mob movie to do. Then we're forced to watch the main characters sit around and talk about it. The plot line runs without humps or spikes. There's no build or climax. The movie ends on the same level it started.We've seen this all before, and much better in A Bronx Tale, Goodfellas and pretty much every other coming of age mob story. Calling this a mob movie is kind. All mob references are seen from afar. We only catch whispers, see wise guys across a room and a great true-life mob storyline being played out and discarded on the TV. This is as much a mob movie as Python's "Holy Grail" was a movie about religion.The main problem with this movie is it can't decide what to focus on. There's no real plot. The mob aspect of the film tags along in the background and teases us with some good "Bada Bing" fun that never arrives. Is it a mob movie? A coming of age story? A love story? Who knows because it never grabs one story and holds on to make it worth it. There are no defining moments. There are no moments that explore character. We're left with a tangling mess that seems to have been put together from the "Mob Movie" cutting room floor.