making your first feature film ain’t easy .
assemble a decent , if not , strong cast , as writer/director robert moresco has done with one eyed king , and you’re already ahead of the game .
but rehash old plot lines , tired dialogue , and standard clich ? s , and a well-intentioned effort such as this one could jeopardize your chance at a second feature film .
how many more movies do we need about a rough neighborhood full of lifelong friends hopelessly turned to crime or worse ?
the enormous catalog of such movies might dissuade a filmmaker from making yet another , but here we have it .
again .
five irish kids in nyc’s hell’s kitchen make an overemotional pact over some stolen rings on an anonymous rooftop .
with teary music .
and slow motion .
in the film’s first scene .
the kids grow up to be fairly worthless adults , unable or unwilling to make their way out of the heat of the kitchen .
leading the clueless pack is william baldwin as a good-hearted guy who watches out for his buddies and is in tight with local mob head armand assante .
i’d like to say that his character gets involved over his head in some sort of blah , blah , blah , but all we seem to get are little tastes of possible plot points .
he’s concerned about buddy jason gedrick’s heroin abuse .
he sticks up for jim breuer after he impregnates baldwin’s character’s sister .
he looks into who might be pushing the most moronic-looking counterfeit cash ever made ( a genuinely funny touch ) .
but none of this ever really amounts to anything .
it seems that moresco’s greater concern is to provide that intangible ” slice of life ” , that flavor of the neighborhood that everyone’s been trying to evoke since scorsese’s early work .
so , we get the drunk guys , hugging and singing together at the local bar , to prove to us that they really love each other .
( do people actually do this ! ? )
we get a lot of tough street talk — usually mumbled for effect — and a whole lot of the f-word , whether it sounds like it fits or not .
we also get a handful of good actors in small roles that seem to lack purpose .
bruno kirby , chazz palminteri , you know , guys you’ve seen in movies just like this one before .
assante is intelligent casting as the man that everyone fears , and baldwin’s performance is adequate , but most of the rest of the cast jump into the tough guy persona so thoroughly that it’s almost funny .
moresco , a theater guy and sometimes tv writer ( including the series falcone ) , obviously labored over this one as anyone might a first child , but the content is probably too personal .
as a result , the movie’s style is heavy-handed , in need of a considerable amount of toning down .
nearly every time an action by the grown up gang recalls something they did as kids , moresco reminds us — boy does he remind us .
with slow dissolves to the earlier scene , running in slow motion , complete with dialogue from the present , just in case we don’t comprehend the link to the past .
moresco needs to either trust his audience’s intelligence , or have more faith in his own presentation rather than beat us over the head with it .
his next project should have a little more personal distance , and a lot more subtlety .
if he actually gets that chance .
reviewed as part of our 2001 boston film festival coverage ( feature story coming soon ) .