Les chaînes du sang

When I was a teen, I saw BLOODBROTHERS as a double feature with a horror movie (don't ask me which one). I thought the movie was overwrought then but I sorta enjoyed the fact that the film was dealing with ordinary folks. I've seen the movie recently and whoa, what a terrible melodrama. Except for Gere and Tony Lo Bianco, the film is almost unwatchable. It's badly shot. Looks really cheap. And the level of melodrama in the script and direction is, well, actually revolting. What were they thinking? Every scene with the mother and the kid. Every scene with the wife cheating and Lo Bianco finding out. All the hospital scenes. They all scream melodrama. BLOODBROTHERS is not a very subtle movie. It hammers every emotions and blue-collar story-lines with the light touch of a sledgehammer.

The only reason to watch BLOODBROTHERS is for Tony Lo Bianco, an underrated actor if there ever was one, and a star-making performance by a then young Richard Gere. Whenever Gere is on screen, he eclipses everything else. He really stands-out from the grubby looking project. If you need to see where Gere started out, you have to watch this but if you're looking for a good story about ordinary folks, avoid this movie at all cost.

First I have to say that the novel Bloodbrothers by Richard Price is one of my alltime favorite books. Usually Hollywood has to make changes to make a movie viable , but in this one changing the book's ending kind of negated the novel's point. This is about a blue collar Bronx family with a long line of tradition as construction workers. Richard Gere in one of his first leading roles plays the sensitive older son who wants to work with children. His macho father, well played by Tony Lo Bianco, pressures him to work construction.Lo Bianco's tyrant character has made his whole family miserable, yet he is never played as a stereotype. The entire cast is good but at times it plays like a blue collar soap opera. If you haven't read the book, the film's highly charged emotions may hit home.

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Right from the get-go, this thing is off the chain! Paul Sorvino and Tony Lo Bianco play two "bruddas from Noo Yawk" who work in construction and are getting drunk. Richard Gere, who actually seems like a real person and not a caricature of a New York Italian, gives the best performance.

So much swearing for a movie that I taped off of Turner Classic Movies in the wee hours of the morning! Nothing against swearing but I can't believe I taped it off of Turner Classic Movies! There's a hilariously over the top scene with Tony Lo Bianco's wife and their younger son...I just sat there with my mouth open. My hat's off to the actors but maybe the director should have reigned them all in a little, it comes off a little too hysterical...or maybe that's just how it is in Italian households? That's just my opinion but check it out for yourself. If nothing else, you'll laugh inappropriately like I did.

I was entertained throughout though, every scene is special in that it could be it's own short film. I felt like they were adapting the book chapter by chapter. If you like this time period and the movies from then, you will want to see it.

Robert Mulligan is a director who can sometimes serve up a masterpiece and sometimes a megabomb. Take To Kill A Mockingbird, for example, an undisputed classic which would appear on most top 100 lists. Then compare it to The Stalking Moon, a 1968 western which is as boring as it is heavy-handed. In Bloodbrothers, Mulligan has managed to be inconsistent within one movie - aspects of his family drama are pretty good, other parts are downright dull.

Young New Yorker Stony De Coco (Richard Gere) is approaching his 20s and is at the junction of life where he must decide where his future lies. His aggressive, misogynistic father Tommy (Tony LoBianco) expects him to follow in the family tradition of becoming an electrician on construction sites, but Stony feels he has a better aptitude for working with children. He gets a job looking after kids at a city hospital, and finds plenty of rewards in the job, but Tommy applies increasing pressure on him to look for a more "macho", manly job.

Stony's dilemma is quite interesting, and the role is played pretty well by a young, impressive Gere. Tommy is also a strongly-written character, memorably fleshed-out by the reliable and ever-underrated LoBianco. In fact, on the performance front the film is somewhat impressive all the way down the cast. The faults in Bloodbrothers lie elsewhere. Walter Newman's script (arguably the least worthy screenplay ever to receive an Oscar nomination) makes too many unforgivable changes to its source novel; the pacing is less than ideal (the film is halfway through before it becomes apparent where the story is really going); and the broader social and personal issues in the story are never satisfactorily developed. As an acting showcase, this is good stuff but as an overall film it's not so good. There's certainly no reason why you shouldn't give it a go, but it's doubtful that this will ever be a film you want to watch over and over again.

Apparently there are those who feel that the changes made to the novel on which Bloodbrothers is based render the film version less than a classic. Ironic since the Academy bestowed a nomination on the film for Best Adapted Screenplay. But I think this film is still very worthwhile to view.

Tony LoBianco and Paul Sorvino play a pair of middle aged 40 something brothers who cut loose and act like juveniles on the weekend. Especially at Kenneth McMillan's bar where all kinds of bragging about all kinds of things about length and volume take place.

Sorvino is a laid back soul and unlikely to grow up since he's not married and has no reason to grow up. But LoBianco rules a tyrannical household where his wife Leila Goldini is continually afraid and his younger son Michael Hershawe is anorexic from not eating. His oldest son Richard Gere is not sure that he wants to become an electrician like his father and uncle and the grandfather before them.

Two things are impressive about the brothers. Both believe in the value of the dollar and being good providers. Both also are true to their trade and take pride in their work. That's a thing rarer and rarer these days. LoBianco's lecture to Gere is one of the best scenes in the film I felt.

Sad to say there are some less desirable qualities in them, especially LoBianco. The fact that he is the family breadwinner makes him feel he's king of the castle with the rights of royalty to maybe even get a bit of something on the side. When Goldini finds proof of that it sets in motion a train of events that brings down the DeCoco family.

He's got the showiest role and the most to work with in developing a character, but Tony LoBianco really steals this one. Big surprise to me that he was not put into Oscar contention. LoBianco goes through quite a range of emotions with his DeCoco brother. And it's all a mystery to him that he's got the problems he has in his household because his father sure didn't.

By the way note that Richard Gere seems to have the same kind of issues with his family in the Bronx that John Travolta has with his Brooklyn based family. Of course Travolta's Tony Manero comes a lot less dysfunctional group, but the Maneros and DeCocos have a lot of similarities.

It might not be the book that others have read and cite. But Bloodbrothers is fine drama if disconcerting.