The first hour of this movie is pretty good. De Niro is good as a hardworking bus-driver dad, Chazz Palminteri makes a good local mobster, and the kid actor for Calogero is good as well. The gangsters seem a bit romanticized, and the imitation of Scorcese is fairly obvious, but its not bad. Basically it centers around the battle over the kid's affections between the mob boss and his dad, and between the lure of glamorous gangster life and his dad's honest hard work. There's also very entertaining scene of a bar brawl between mobsters and bikers.
Is it just me, or did the movie become much less convincing during the second half? C has a romance with a black girl, which could have been fine, but it starts in an abrupt, unconvincing "love at first sight" fashion and turns into a preachy morality tale that reminded me of an after-school special, while C's moronic racist friends meet a deserved ugly end. And I'm sorry, Mr. Mob Boss is not that convincing as an enlightened source of fatherly wisdom.
Anyway, the movie struck me as Scorcese-lite, good at first but with a Degrassi High-ish ending.
Is it just me, or did the movie become much less convincing during the second half? C has a romance with a black girl, which could have been fine, but it starts in an abrupt, unconvincing "love at first sight" fashion and turns into a preachy morality tale that reminded me of an after-school special, while C's moronic racist friends meet a deserved ugly end. And I'm sorry, Mr. Mob Boss is not that convincing as an enlightened source of fatherly wisdom.
Anyway, the movie struck me as Scorcese-lite, good at first but with a Degrassi High-ish ending.