Review of A Bronx Tale (1993) by Melissa E — 01 Jan 2010

While it was entertaining, good in parts it is mostly a disappointment for me even that I wasn't expecting to see a film as brilliant as Scorsese's Goodfellas.

De Niro has also an acting part and is a good performance by De Niro as Lorenzo, the father of the main character Calogero. However this film hasn't terrific acting everywhere, to begin with the kid that plays Calogero age 9 (Francis Capra) yet this the first part of the film is the one that I liked the most, with a good De Niro, funny parts, is just very entertaining. A Bronx Tale has two parts, first part is in 1960 and is a pretty simple set: on one hand Calogero has in his father a real example, a working man devoted to his family and on the other hand has in the gangster Sonny (Chazz Palminteri is good, he also wrote the film) the man who is nothing but his idol, the man he really admires, the man who has never look at him, the man who everybody fears. The main thing in the second part of the film, that begins when we jump to 1968, is a racial issue: C's (Sonny renamed Calogero as C) all time friends have problems each time black men pass through "their" neighborhood. C on the other hand has no problem and he likes a black girl, is all really conventional, predictable, you know.

Here we have Francis Capra, Lillo Brancato Jr. (who plays C during the second part of the film so who is Calogero age 17) and Taral Hicks (who plays C's love interest Jane Williams) doing their screen debut, none of these 3 did were good choices, the main character itself is very weak and very unlikable but mostly the problem is Taral Hicks, each time she was on the screen I was thinking, and also laughing a little, "why De Niro didn't found better actors?", she is really terrible. So A Bronx Tale was mostly a disappointment, still it has really great music: Hendrix (his brilliant version of Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower"), The Beatles (one of my favourites from them, "Come Together"), Cream, The Kinks, "Nights in White Satin" by The Moody Blues.