Deuces Wild

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...

Ok, it's a rumble movie. It's like LORDS OF FLATBUSH with half the soul. It's WEST SIDE STORY without the song and dance. It's THE OUTSIDERS without the literary writing.

Sure, it's got a boatload of talented young faces, some already established, most semi-established when this released. But the script? Ugh. It's juvenile, simplistic, one-dimensional, mindlessly violent (though not graphic); something lifted from a 1960 "JD" message flick, but with better production values, including color.

I gave it a six out of pity and because I like Stephen Dorff, but it deserves a five. And Brad Renfro? How did so many filmmakers see potential in HIM before he died not long after this?

Bottomline: this is not an awful movie. It's not painful to watch. But it's a youth film that belongs in the 80s, not in 2003. And it doesn't deserve the actors it cast. From the list of actors, I'd guess this was a hot property when it was getting assembled, but subsequently, the writers and director let half the air out of its balloon and repackaged GREASE. Oh, and Norman Reedus? A disheartening case of one-note-johnny overacting in this particular effort.

I gotta suspect that the director let the cast down with mediocre, uninspired directions to the actors.

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`Deuces Wild' feels like it is about 25 years out of date, especially since it adds nothing new to a well-worn genre that can pinpoint its beginnings as far back as 1961's magnificent `West Side Story.'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.

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.

This movie was basically just a good guy vs. bad guy movie. Its one of the best that I've seen since the "Outsiders"! Its definatley a movie that should be seen on the big screen! The acting was awesome, and the writers did an excellent job on the script. There are really no upsets in this movie, and no sex or nudity. This is just a good movie that i reccomend!