Paixões Cruzadas

This movie gives me painful memories of the plethora of "beatnick" movies made in the '60s, which had absolutely nothing to do with reality and everything to do with Hollywood's misperception of what society was like.

The screenplay seems like it was hastily scribbled onto the back of a napkin during a lunch break. The directing makes the actors look like fourteen-year-olds trying to act "tough." To paraphrase an old fiction warning, "any similarity between this movie and reality is entirely coincidental and unintentional."

Eric Roberts provides the only performance worth noting in this poor excuse for entertainment, but if you look closely into his eyes, you'll notice that he seems to be thinking to himself "WTF am I doing in this steaming pile?"

I give it three stars because it'd look OK playing in the background on a bunch of TVs in a retail showroom, but definitely not worth viewing.

The Beautiful Ones is a really good movie I just saw on Amazon and surprisingly not seen by many people ( based on the few comments). One familiar theme of gangster films is family, and family is pivotal to this movie. Gabe is a Steve McQueen loving anti-hero from a Mafia family. He dresses like him ( including buying his sunglasses for $650:00 plus tax), and even drives a motorcycle and a car like McQueen. He is even citing his movies ( such as Papillon and the Magnificent 7 throughout the movie ( and talking to the audience directly about those films). He is also good with the ladies so his aunt to get Eve the daughter of a rival Mafia family to fall in love with him. Of course, he falls in love with her as well. What happens? His family kidnaps her and and he must choose between Eve and family. I will not spoil the movie, except to say everyone pays a heavy price in the movie. I give it 8/10 stars. A very enjoyable gangster movie.

I started watching this movie for the director Jesse V Johnson, who has directed several terrific B-movies, that are full on action packed and thrilling with great acting performances. NONE of that is to be found in this movie though...

The bad: the worst part, THE VERY WORST PART IS THE LEADING ACTOR WHO LOOKS LIKE A DESKCLERK. And this "deskclerk" actor is suppose to be a ruthless killer crime boss. It's LAUGHABLE.

More bad: it gets worse though, (hence my 1 star rating) because this "deskclerk" actor is supposedly a ladies man as well, so we get to see CRINGEWORTHY "romantic" scenes that are so painful to watch that I am truly lost for words to describe the absolute low this movie reached...

The reason I watched this movie was for Jason Mayhem Miller and he didn't disappoint. The other actors are ok; I never heard of most of them.

I would highly recommend this movie for families and hard core fans of mafioso movies, like Goodfellas.

This is a seriously underrated and under appreciated film. It is immersed in a love of cinema. Jesse V. Johnson is the king of the mow budget action film and his scripts are bright and fun. His understanding of action, violence, and gun play are high level. His balance of masculine energy and romance are terrific. This is actually the turning point of Johnson from a smaller film maker to a more high profile one. This one is the story of a mob enforcer obsessed with Steve McQueen that falls in love with the waring mob family's daughter- a modern Romeo and Juliet. This is also a tribute to Western films, seemingly a passion of Johnson. This one is not perfect but the total is greater than the sum of its parts. I love the characters. I love thew music and the look. This one gets better over time and in a 2nd and 3rd viewing.