Ruas Selvagens

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.

Deuces Wild has gotten a lot of unfavourable comments by viewers and critics. I didn't think it was such a bad movie, especially considering the budget the producers and director had to work with. With the limited funds to make this film, the scenes were filmed with very few takes - giving it a 'play' feel.

The story reminds me of "The Outsiders" and "West Side Story" - which I found to be one of the down sides of the movie, but I still liked it overall.

Stephen Dorff gives a great performance as Leon, the Deuces leader. Supporting actor Mr. Renfro did not impress me however. A couple of the actors from "The Sopranos" play supporting roles. Drea De Matteo looks awesome in this film.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

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.

Only those nostalgic for nostalgia are likely to be very impressed by `Deuces Wild,' a film that seems somehow more attuned to the ‘50's-crazed 1970's – a time when popular culture was embracing backward-looking fare like `American Graffiti' and `Happy Days' – than to the era in which it is actually set. That happens to be Brooklyn in the summer of 1958, when the streets were overrun with denim- and leather-clad hoodlums who smoked cigarettes, drove cool cars, and strutted around looking for fights to protect or extend their seemingly God-given `turf.'

`Deuces Wild' feels like it is about 25 years out of date, especially since it adds nothing new to a well-worn genre that can pinpoint its beginnings as far back as 1961's magnificent `West Side Story.' In fact, this is little more than `West Side Story' sans the music and dancing. Although the Jets and the Sharks have been replaced by the Deuces and the Vipers, we still have all the other elements from that earlier, better film: the challenges, the rumbles, the ineffectual and almost nonexistent parents, even a pair of lovers from opposite gangs caught in the inter-neighborhood warfare. The boys are utterly interchangeable and indistinguishable from one another, the dysfunctional parents beyond belief (one mother is so far gone mentally that she celebrates Christmas all year round and even believes in the existence of Santa Claus), and the action so pretentiously filmed that half of the dramatic scenes come replete with studio-generated thunder and lightning designed to lend tragic `significance' to what is, essentially, pretty silly, garden-variety hooliganism. The closing rumble scene is so confusingly shot and edited that it takes the voiceover narration to straighten out for us who got killed and who didn't.

The cast of mostly youthful actors does its best with shallow, stereotypical roles, but one should at least pity poor Frankie Muniz, that charming young star of TV's `Malcolm in the Middle,' who delivers a surprisingly dorky performance in the extremely sketchy and underwritten part of Scooch, the neighborhood `good kid' whom Leon, the Deuces' leader, takes under his wing. Hopefully, Muniz' film career will get better from here on out.

About the best one can say for `Deuces Wild' is that it is one hell of a good-looking film, thanks to John A. Alonzo's rich cinematography, which enhances the film's fine period décor. A pity that little else about the film merits similar commendation.

It never ceases to amaze me that such crap is put to celluloid over and over again. Deuces Wild is a shining example of such crap. The plot is full of recycled storylines, the script is laughable at best and the directing is confoundingly bad. Why so many tired slo-mo scenes? And do we really need to see another showdown in thunder and lightning? And, despite the fact that this movie is set in the 1950s, the score sounds like it came from an episode of Miami Vice! Unbelievable. Anybody associated with this abomination should do everything in their power to ensure that nobody else sees it and, furthermore, should never speak of their role in the production of the "film"