Brooklyn Rules (2007)

ridiculous rating

Instant Favorite.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

'Brooklyn Rules' tells the story of three friends growing up in Brooklyn in the 80s. They live in a blue-collar, working-class neighborhood and have hopes for a good life ahead of them. The friendship bond among these young men is very strong. It runs for years living together. Nonetheless, time has caught up with them and life appears to open new horizons to each one of them; in this case an unforeseen event plays the role of separating their common lives for ever.One of the friends is a rather aloof individual (easy come, easy go) but also a very good student showing promise to enter Law School; in the meantime he works in a grocery store part-time. The second is preparing to get married to his girlfriend. He is also looking for a job and is ready to move out from his parents house. The third is attracted by the life of local mob people and slowly enters their circles. This is the only way he feels that people in the community will respect him.This is a very good and poignant film about friendship and loyalty especially in the 'tough' working-class neighborhoods of big cities like New York (here in this movie), but I think it would equally apply to many other cities where young people grow up and dream for a better tomorrow. I recommend strongly this film. A 9/10 from me.

This is obviously one of those gangster movies to tries very hard to be just like "Goodfellas". But instead of focusing mostly on one character it has three of them. Problem is, there is absolutely nothing good, interesting or original ever happening in the movie. It's a real lackluster movie that lacks at basically every department.Bad writing, bad directing, bad acting, bad editing. The movie is suffering from all these things. Really, I would had been OK for this movie to 'borrow' from other genre movies, if it would had been only done in a good and original way. This is obviously just not the case with this movie.The story really isn't going anywhere, or perhaps it feels that way because it is so clichéd. You basically know beforehand what is going to happen in a scene and how things are going to end up eventually. The story is far from an involving one really because we just never really get into any of the characters. The movie tries to present the three main characters as just average guys, who due to circumstances get caught up in bad situations and get tangled in with the underworld. But thing is, they don't come across as average normal guys at all. They each have their own very clichéd and cardboard, forced personalities. Here we have a sweet guy, a bad guy and a in-between guy, basically. It's also odd how the movie throws in some uninteresting plot-lines for them and then decides to completely focus on them. I mean, when I watch a gangster flick I'm just not that interested in seeing a guy trying to make it at school. The movie could at least had been more interesting if it focused on the Scott Caan characters instead of on the Freddie Prinze Jr. one.And watching Freddie Prinze Jr. acting tough really made me laugh. It really isn't working out very convincing in this movie. He just comes across as a guy who got bullied himself at high school but now he is acting as the tough guy in movies. It's laughable really and his acting comes across as horrible because of this. He is really miscast and Alec Baldwin totally feels out of place as well. I just kept waiting for them to finally do something interesting with his character and they could and should had easily made him an important part of the story but he only shows up a couple of times and to be frank, it feels a bit forced all because his character really doesn't add that much at all. To me, this was perhaps the biggest disappointment of the movie, since I am quite fond of Alec Baldwin and was interested in seeing him in this type of role. With only a few minor changes this movie still could had been a decent one, at it's very least, to watch. Besides different casting and changing the focus of the movie they could had made things a bit more raw and edgier. After all, this is a gangster movie but the movie doesn't really feel as one at all because there is nothing interesting, crime-wise, or violence-wise happening really. Why not put in a big criminal kind of plot, like an heist or hit or something. I'm just making this stuff up as I'm writing this, then how come the writers of this movie didn't think about any of these things. They knew they were writing a gangster movie right? Perhaps it was due to budgeting reasons but this movie is totally lacking the right atmosphere. They could had made the movie moodier if they made the movie a bit more dark to watch. Now it really feels like you are watching a cheap television-series episode. Just a couple of things that would had made this movie so much better to watch.A real pointless and redundant genre effort, that is lacking at every department. Yes, there are far worse movies to watch out there but that doesn't mean that this movie is a good one either.5/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

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.

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.