Deuces Wild - Wild in den Straßen

I liked this movie, it was very unrelenting and dark - The fight scenes are pretty intense especially the last one. A good story about an exploding gang rivalry, there are good performances from Fairuza Balk, Brad Renfro, Drea DeMatteo and others but the two actors from the Blade series really stood out here. I'm talkin' about Stephen Dorff(Blade, Judgment Night) and Norman Reedus(Blade 2, Boondock Saints), they were great in the rival roles of Leon and Marco, they really brought their hatred for each other to life, good job...

The trailers to this movie looked good. Maybe they should have released the trailer as the feature.

It seems that a rite of passage for all young, white, male actors is to play an Italian or Irish street tough from Brooklyn (or Jersey or Boston or Philadelphia or Chicago, or Detroit). Any large industrial city where the actors can get away with putting on a stereotypical accent.

But that's not all that bothers me about this movie. There are the tired, clichéd lines like: "...and the streets of Brooklyn where red with blood" and "If I see you talkin' to him again, you're out in the street. You and your old lady."

Fairuza Balk is the only interesting actor in this film. She has some clichéd lines just like the others, but she also has most of the movie's original ones. I especially liked "...and before that, I crawled out from between my mother's legs. Got any more questions?"

Brad Renfro is a decent actor, but he should stick to what he does best. The misplaced, naive and/or clueless kid like he was in "Ghost World" and "Telling Lies in America."

Steven Dorff is not a good actor, period. In this movie, he comes across as a wannabe actor high school jock trying to play Stanley Kowalski. But at least it wasn't as bad as his portrayal of Candy Darling in "I Shot Andy Warhol". There he came across as a frat boy in drag for the homecoming talent show.

Frankie Muniz is cute, but that's all.

Matt Dillon is tired as his typecast role of the tough guy. He should do the opposite of Brad Renfro and go back to taking risks like he did in "Something About Mary."

I have a fondess for urban, period drama. But the script has to be orginal and the casting should be based on more than just looks.

Don't you hate it when you're standing in the videostore and you already saw all movies that there ? Those are the moments that you rent movies like Deuces Wild...these kind of titles are never high on your list but you take them anyway because the synopsis doesn't sound too bad and you know the washed up actors in it from their earlier - more glorious - roles.

The stories of these movies are never highly original. We've all seen it before. The only thing movies like this can do is provide the story with a few interesting twists, cool characters and some good looking settings and locations. And, I'm not being too harsh today, Deuces Wild succeeds in doing so. The story takes place in the 1950's. After he lost his brother to an overdose of Heroïne, Leon ( Stephen Dorff ) founds the "Deuces". A steetgang that tries to keep the Brooklyn neighborhood clean. Opposite to this, is the Viper streetgang. Their leader is about to get released from jail and he ( Norman Reedus from Boondock Saints ) wants to take revenge because he thinks Leon framed him. It looks like a war between both gangs can't be avoided even though the true king of the Brooklyn streets, Fritzy ( a small but great role by Matt Dillon ) , strongly warned them not to fight.

Deuces Wild contains a lot of decent actors who never really reached the highest status. You've got the ones I already mentioned, but also known names like Fairuza Balk, Brad Renfro and Deborah Harry. The cast also includes a few upcoming names like James Franco and the annoying ( in my opinion, of course ) Frankie Muniz. They also deliver pretty decent acting jobs but the show gets stolen by the nice and good 50's settings. We're talking old-timers, juke-boxes and lots of hairgel. You're never touched by the story or the characters and that's the biggest disadvantage of this movie. You don't really care who wins or who loses. You never feel involved in the story, but you don't mind watching it. If you ever come across it on TV or at your local videostore...give it a go. It stands for an hour and a half of fun.

Anyone who has seen The Outsiders, Goodfellas, A Bronx Tale or Last Man Standing doesn't really need to watch this film because you've already seen it. The line up here includes a very promising cast of Steven Dourff as Leon, Brad Renfro as Bobby, Matt Dillon as Fritzy, Frankie Muniz as Scooch and Johnny Knoxville as Vince. But with all those characters comes very little character developementand leaves us with a full cast of characters that we don't care about with the small exception of Leon. We start the film with the death of Leon's brother and the imprisonment of Marko, the rival gang leader who gave his brother the drugs that killed him. Fast forward three years, Marko is out of jail and all hell is breaking loose on Leon's once peaceful block, Marko is also making a deal with Fritzy (the head of the block) to get his drugs back on the street and Leon's brother Bobby is becoming involved with the sister of a Viper. This film has everything, the rival gangs (Outsiders), the big show downs (Last Man Standing), the gangster who is in charge of everything (Bronx Tale) and the drug dealing (Goodfellas). But because of this the flim is robbed of any sort of self identity and becomes rather bogged down and boring, leading up to a conclusion that is inevidable because we have all seen it a hundred times before, just better. This film could have been a masterpeice were it put into the proper hands, but Scott Calvert is no Martin Scorsese and Matt Dillon is no Robert De Niro, so we are left satisfied to some extent, but still feel robbed of something. The lackluster direction and enormously cliched script don't help matters any. It's clear director Scott Calvert tried his hardest to be clever but his annoying camera tricks don't suit this movie well at all, in fact some of them are, at time, very hard to watch. The fight scenes are plentiful but lack any excitement due to the horrible choreograhpy and again cheesy camera movement making it hard to tell who is who. Matt Dillon show plenty of promise but is only given four scenes in the whole movie, Johnny Knoxville is a nobody that serves no importance and is hardly noticable and Frankie Muniz hardly mutters a word the whole time. I have always found Steven Dourff to have possessed a certain degree of talent but he has yet to be given a role where he can break free and show us what he is really made of, but he is still, by far, the highlight of the film. Now don't get me wrong, the movie is not a total waste and there are probably lots of people that this sort of thing will appeal to but its lack of originality cancels out any power of emotion and even though we have a cast of characters that I really didn't care about except for Leon, it's an hour and a half of my life that I don't regret.

I had wanted to see DEUCES WILD when it was out at the theatres, because who wouldn't want to see a film about rival gangs in 1950's Brooklyn? But I had to wait for it to come out on DVD and VHS. After viewing it, I was kind of left with mixed emotions. On one hand you've got Stephen Dorff giving an awesome and intense performance looking like a young Bruce Willis (DIE HARD not "Moonlighting"). And you've got an equally impressive role from Brad Renfro, who has come along way since his last role as a New Yorker in SLEEPERS. On top of that you won't be able to take your eyes off Drea de Matteo, who looks even hotter than she does in "The Sopranos". But despite these great points I just couldn't get that bad taste out of my mouth, which was a result of all those damn cliches. Cliched characters, cliched dialogue, cliched plot structure, etc. The film ultimately comes off like a silly cross between THE OUTSIDERS, STREETS OF FIRE (you remember that Greaser movie with Rick Moranis and Wilem Dafoe?), and of course WEST SIDE STORY. I also think there was a small case of miscasting here, I mean with the exception of Matt Dillon and Balthazar Getty what are these guys supposed to be Italian, Irish, what? Anyway the film is only mildly entertaining because of its rather brutal fight scenes. Other than that it just could of been so much better with a couple more rewrites of the script and someone else to play Marco. By the way, I'm really getting sick of these movies that get you all hot and bothered and then fail to deliver the goods.