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Step outside
[Photo: United Artists]
Can you spot the stars in the Deuces gang? From left, Clayton Barber, James Franco, Shamus Murphy, Danny Cistone, Stephen Dorff, Melvin Rodriguez, Brad Renfro, Ronnie Marmo, Frankie Muniz, Michael Endoso and Alex City join forces against the rival Vipers. |
By PHILIP BOOTH, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 2, 2002
Fists fly, chains swing and switchblades flash in Deuces Wild, a look at New York gangs in the 1950s that mixes nostalgia and violence to get melodrama.
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Deuces Wild, something of a refried West Side Story with far more grit and none of the joyful exuberance of that 1961 film (and, uh, no musical sequences), reportedly was shot in 2000, ready for release last spring, pushed to the fall and bumped again in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
Meanwhile, several of the movie's young stars, namely Frankie Muniz of television's Malcolm in the Middle and the movie My Dog Skip, have grown in appearance and commercial viability. A handful of cast members, too, have gained so much exposure from roles in HBO's The Sopranos that their work here seems irrelevant.
So this late 1950s period piece from director Scott Kalvert (The Basketball Diaries) is finally being released, and on a weekend when it does battle with the mighty Spidey. Was it the worth the wait?
Well, sure, particularly for those viewers sure to go gaga over endless rumbles, pointlessly extended orgies of hand-to-hand combat featuring leather-jacketed toughies playing dirty with baseball bats, chains, switchblades and their fists. Those keen on loosely structured melodrama centered on dysfunctional families -- missing dads, addled moms, teens with zero at-home guidance -- might appreciate Deuces Wild, too.
For the rest of us, Kalvert's underachievement amounts to a rather tired exercise in nostalgia, with plenty of cliched dialogue and lots of opportunities for star spotting: There's Matt Dillon, himself a veteran of lost-boys flicks (The Outsiders, Rumble Fish). There's Big Pussy (Vincent Pastore) and Adriana (Drea DeMatteo) from The Sopranos. And isn't that Deborah Harry, the Blondie singer and occasional actor, nearly unrecognizable as an older woman addicted to Christmas music and convinced that Santa Claus lives upstairs? Yes.
Moody lighting is as much a character as anyone else in Deuces Wild, and Oscar-nominated cinematographer John A. Alonso (Chinatown, Cool World) pours it on from the get-go, in an overblown, sentimental opening scene that establishes the movie's central conflicts.
Leon (Stephen Dorff), the leader of the Deuces gang, wailing for his mother, drags home his brother Allie Boy (Blake Bashoff), dead from an overdose; later, we see flashbacks of the kid, pale and unconscious, at a playground. Marco (Norman Reedus), leader of rival bad boys the Vipers, had something to do with the overdose, and local crime kingpin Fritzy (Dillon) may have been involved, too. Leon, concerned about the welfare of his younger brother, Bobby (Brad Renfro), vows to keep the mean streets -- a Hollywood lot, inspired by renowned photographer Bruce Davidson's book Brooklyn Gang -- clean of "junk."
Flash forward several years, and Marco (last name Vendetti) is preparing to leave prison and carry out a vendetta against those he believes were responsible for sending him to jail. Bobby, all grown up and tired of living in his big brother's shadow, is beginning a romance with Annie (Fairuza Balk), sister of Jimmy (Balthazar Getty), who's been leading the Vipers while Marco was in prison. Leon, meanwhile, is in semiretirement from the thug life, protective of his now-alcoholic mom and happy in love with blond bombshell Betsy (DeMatteo).
Father Aldo (Pastore), the kindly neighborhood priest, advises against more fighting, but his pleas fall on deaf ears: There are wrongs to be righted, and endless cycles of revenge to be pursued. Soon enough, the neighborhood has been terrorized by the power-hungry Vipers, and rumbling returns to Brooklyn.
Bored by the fighting, I couldn't help thinking: Too bad these kids didn't put down their fists, get jobs, save up, buy their own homes and cash in when gentrification came to their part of New York City. That's another movie.
Deuces Wild
- Grade: C
- Director: Scott Kalvert
- Cast: Stephen Dorff, Brad Renfro, Fairuza Balk, Vincent Pastore, Frankie Muniz, Balthazar Getty, Norman Reedus, Max Perlich, Josh Leonard, Johnny Knoxville
- Screenplay: Paul Kimatian and Christopher Gambale
- Rating: R; violence, drug abuse
- Running time: 97 minutes
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