Review of A Bronx Tale (1993) by Brendan C — 30 Mar 2013

A Bronx tale is one of the great gangster movies. What is good about it is that it is a much more clean gangster films then ones like Casino or Scarface. It does have some violence in it, but not a ton. The film isn't very dark which gives it an interesting feel, and it actually has a lot of humor in it, which I liked a lot. It was Robert De Niro's directorial debut, and he did just a well, as you would expect him to do. The film felt like Goodfellas, but less brutal. It had a few of the same actors, and it was similar because of the narrating.

Calogero Anello (Age 17 (Lillo Brancato Jr.)) narrates the story from the point where he first got involved with Sonny (Chazz palminteri) when he was nine years old. Like Henry Hill from Goodfellas he was a gangster when he was a kid. Lorenzo Anello (Robert De Niro) drives the bus in their neighborhood, and they live next door to the bar that the mob hangs out in. Part of the film is Lorenzo's struggle to keep his son from going over there. Calogero (Age 9 (Francis Capra)) witnesses Sonny murder a man on the street in broad daylight. The police line up all the suspects and tell him to identify who did it, and he doesn't rat them out. He thinks he did a good thing but his father tells him "You did a good thing for a very bad man.".

Calegero goes to the bar and wins Sonny a lot of money playing crabs for him, and gets a cut of the winnings. His father finds out about it and confronts Sonny to leave his kid alone. It then flashes forward eight years and the guy who plays Calegero at age 17 (Lillo Brancato) looks like a really young Robert De Nero. Calegero is a very smart kid, and is good friends with everybody in the mob.

Sonny teaches Calegero that it is tough to be feared and loved, but if you could only be one it is better to be feared. He says you can't give them too much or they will walk all over you. He also taught him what makes a great woman, and that you can only have three great ones. The film is more about relationships that mob violence then movies like Goodfellas. That makes it a more interesting movie. He ends up falling for an African American girl named Jane, and that causes problems. A lot of the things in this movie revolve around race, like the n-bomb gets dropped a lot. Also they beat up a couple of black guys on the street just for being black in one scene. That is the only bad part of the film.

The film was great. It was really well acted, and they trained Francis Capra not to blink, which I thought was good. I really liked this movie and I would put in in the top ten for gangster films. If you like stuff like Goodfellas you will like this, though it is not as good as Goodfellas it is really good.