NEW ON DVD: “Brooklyn Rules” with Alec Baldwin
By Norm Schrager at September 18, 2007 | 10:21 pm | Print
After writing 25 episodes of The Sopranos and 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’, screenwriter Terence Winter stays on the mean streets with Brooklyn Rules. This 1980s-era crime story looks familiar, sounds familiar… and doesn’t add much to the genre.
WIN A FREE COPY OF BROOKLYN RULES ON DVD
REVIEW: Three Brooklyn buddies grow up in the shadow of a low-level wiseguy, played with snitty toughness by Alec Baldwin: Bobby (Entourage‘s Jerry Ferrara) is the soft, sweet, sensitive type with a future at the post office; Carmine (Scott Caan) is the quintessential tough guy with a future in the mob; and Michael (Freddie Prinze, Jr.?!) is the strong, educated one just trying to “get out”. It’s all a too-typical Scorsese wannabe.
Winter adds a little freshness by framing the tale within the real Gotti family upheaval, but there’s too much cliched dialogue and far too much predictability. And Prinze is woefully miscast — he can’t talk tough, sneer, or curse. He’s simply unable to deliver at this level, and his voiceover narration is sadly weak. Caan is great fun, as usual, but his talents roll right over Prinze.
DIRECTOR: Michael Corrente (American Buffalo, Outside Providence)
CAST: Baldwin, Prinze, Caan, Ferrara, Mena Suvari, Monica Keena (another Entourage alum)
DVD EXTRAS: Commentary by Corrente and Winter; interviews with the cast
The official Brooklyn Rules site
[...] DVD Details and Meet In the Lobby Review [...]
[...] the hideous Brooklyn Rules, I was thinking we’d never hear from Freddie Prinze Jr. again. I was wrong. But, thankfully, [...]