Bring Da Pain
It's da summer of 1958 and Brooklyn's Deuces are at war with a
rival gang. Theirs is a long-running conflict, and for the
Deuces' charismatic leader, Leon (Stephen Dorff), the stakes are
deeply personal. You know this because the film opens with a
scene so broadly operatic you might mistake it for parody. As
rain pours down and thunder crashes, Leon staggers down the
street to his mother's house, carrying his brother's dead body.
Arriving on her stoop, he collapses, his face turned up to the
torrents of rain, his cries so terribly plaintive: "Maaa! Maaa!"
All the while, Leon's younger brother, Bobby (Brad Renfro),
looks confused, part anguished, part uncomprehending, part
resentful. It's a complex moment (and recalls Renfro's similarly
strong performance last year in Larry Clark's Bully), and
it almost saves this first scene from looking as utterly
ridiculous as it does. Alas, there is no saving it, and the rest
of Deuces Wild careens quickly into self-parody without
even seeming to be aware it's happening.
Directed by Scott Kalvert, whose previous film was the more
earnest, more perversely nimble Basketball Diaries
(1995), Deuces Wild is a heavy-handed glob of a movie.
Quite unable to get out of its own way, it invests heavily in
its characters' posturing and longing. "Every kid wants to be
James Dean," says Renfro of his role, and this is, indeed, what
the film appears to be about, that "universal" desire to be a
famously moody and self-destructive movie icon. And so, the boys
-- the Deuces and their sworn enemies, the Vipers -- all look
and act alike. Young toughs, Italian guys with names like Philly
Joe and Jimmy Pockets, they wear those straight-bottomed shirts
with open collars or tight t-shirts with rolled sleeves, shine
their shoes and slick their hair, and hang out with girls in
ponytails, pedal-pushers, and red lipstick. They spend their
days arguing about the Dodgers' move West, or standing on street
corners, usually near pizza joints, and stare each other down.
Because the Deuces and the Vipers argue over turf -- mostly the
aforementioned street corners, and sometimes even whole blocks
-- you might imagine that they are relevant. Like, maybe they're
duck-tailed parallels to today's turf quarrelers. Or perhaps
they're model bullies, with some insight to offer about the ways
that kids (however old they are) seek their identities in
damaging others. But any of that would be a stretch. Deuces
Wild is so dated, in concept and execution, that it's hard
to take any of the characters or situations as seriously as they
take themselves. It even features Matt Dillon as a local kingpin
named Fritzy Zennetti, a character seemingly plucked right out
of Dillon's own 1980 gang film, My Bodyguard, without
taking time even to change his costume or rethink his sneer.
Fritzy's scheme brings all kinds of pain to Leon, who's been
trying to get over Dead Brother, who, by the way, died of a drug
overdose, as well as take care of Bobby and their Ma (ragingly
alcoholic since Dead Brother's death), as well as be a good
helper to the local priest, Father Aldo (The Sopranos'
Vincent Pastore, looking predictably uncomfortable in his
frock). He's trying to be a good role model for Scooch (Frankie
Muniz), whose own dad, a drunk, of course, beats him when he
asks for money for a pretzel. And one more thing, Leon's got a
vavoomy, high-maintenance blond, Betsy (Drea DeMatteo), whose
bullet bra and saddle shoes are only setting her up for a
violent abuse scene. Really, the poor fellow has too much
pressure on him, even for a James Dean clone.
As if all this isn't enough, Fritzy just disrespects the heck
out of Leon. When the latter asks Fritzy to make his case
(Please don't bring drugs into the neighborhood, you know I'm
touchy about them because my brother died of an overdose, etc.),
Fritzy blows him off royally: "Go wear your shirts, sing your
songs, do whatever the fuck it is that you kids do." Maybe
Fritzy's just mad because Leon's Matt Dillon imitation is so
weak.
In any event, Leon takes all this pretty hard, mainly because
he knows that Fritzy's being egged on by Leon's arch-enemy,
Marco (Norman Reedus), just out of jail for selling drugs to
Dead Brother (who actually does have a name, Al). And oh yes, a
few other guys hang around making trouble for Leon and Bobby,
namely the snively wannabe Jimmy Pockets (Balthazar Getty), who
wants only to beat down the Deuces so he can get in good with
Marco. He's mainly in the picture, though, so that his kid
sister, Annie (Fairuza Balk), might throw a wrench in Bobby and
Leon's lives.
That is, Deuces Wild treads heavily into Romeo and
Juliet/West Side Story territory, where it plainly
has no business going. While this conflict does help, in one
instance, to enrich the Bobby-Leon dynamic (they have a serious
talk about the relationship in their little, shared bedroom, and
they actually look like brothers rather than sock-hop posers,
for a minute), for the most part it's a trumped up plot device,
and the brothers spend too much time looking like any other set
of brothers in any other movie just like this one.
Annie's contribution to Bobby's dilemma, aside from being the
enemy's sister, is that she is desperate to get outta town, to
rescue her crazy, Christmas-carol singing mom (Debbie Harry)
from the poverty and meanness and frankly, the overweening
masculinity of their neighborhood. She convinces Bobby to help
them escape, and of course, his not very well-considered scheme
leads to tragedy. It's not hard to guess which brother pays the
Big Price, and which actually Gets Out. It's more difficult to
figure why anyone signed on for this project, which has
reportedly on the shelf for a year, but feels more like it's
been there for, oh, twenty.
— 2 May 2002
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