If you are into the mambo beat, and I am, that alone should make for the foundation of a good movie. Add two prime hunks of beefcake like Assante and Banderas. There is also a chance to see the incomparable Tito Puente perform. Further add the immensely talented Shakespearean-trained Roscoe Lee Browne and Desi Arnaz Jr. portraying his father, and you should have a can't-miss experience. Wrong!
It starts with the directorial debut by Arne (formerly Arnold) Glimscher. Everything is angry and in-your-face. Plot motivations and character motivations are given short shrift or ignored altogether except for ubiquitous anger. The camera angles are out of control. Even the can't-miss score is mishandled and inappropriately matched to different scenes. The pacing is non-existent. The piece-de-resistance is a slow-mo death scene that even Ed Wood could have directed better.
The less said about the *#@%$@* writing the better. This is one of those movies that tries to show you how macho it is by non-stop cursing. But even the non-expletive dialogue is disgusting.
The performances are simply dreadful. In other comments here, I saw that someone called this Banderas' best performance. Huh??? It is, by far, his worst. He renounces it himself! He read his English phonetically and it showed. He was stiff, unconvincing, and totally out-of-sync. He's gorgeous, of course, but his character is too important for that alone to be enough.
Since Armand Assante was playing off him in almost every scene, it threw his timing totally off-balance and accentuated his anger and frustration. His character also did some implausibly stupid things given his background. Cathy Moriarity does what she can in her scenes with Assante, and there he almost seems like a totally different character, one you can stand spending some time with.
The stentorian Roscoe Lee Browne humiliates himself as a Cuban mobster in a pathetically phony accent. Desi Arnaz's scenes give the viewer some unintentional comic relief. Equally hilarious is the eighty-something Puente's attempt to play himself at 45.
Overall, if I were ever asked to teach a class on film, I would use this as my warning lesson on what traps to avoid.
It starts with the directorial debut by Arne (formerly Arnold) Glimscher. Everything is angry and in-your-face. Plot motivations and character motivations are given short shrift or ignored altogether except for ubiquitous anger. The camera angles are out of control. Even the can't-miss score is mishandled and inappropriately matched to different scenes. The pacing is non-existent. The piece-de-resistance is a slow-mo death scene that even Ed Wood could have directed better.
The less said about the *#@%$@* writing the better. This is one of those movies that tries to show you how macho it is by non-stop cursing. But even the non-expletive dialogue is disgusting.
The performances are simply dreadful. In other comments here, I saw that someone called this Banderas' best performance. Huh??? It is, by far, his worst. He renounces it himself! He read his English phonetically and it showed. He was stiff, unconvincing, and totally out-of-sync. He's gorgeous, of course, but his character is too important for that alone to be enough.
Since Armand Assante was playing off him in almost every scene, it threw his timing totally off-balance and accentuated his anger and frustration. His character also did some implausibly stupid things given his background. Cathy Moriarity does what she can in her scenes with Assante, and there he almost seems like a totally different character, one you can stand spending some time with.
The stentorian Roscoe Lee Browne humiliates himself as a Cuban mobster in a pathetically phony accent. Desi Arnaz's scenes give the viewer some unintentional comic relief. Equally hilarious is the eighty-something Puente's attempt to play himself at 45.
Overall, if I were ever asked to teach a class on film, I would use this as my warning lesson on what traps to avoid.