Release Date: May 3, 2002
Starring: Stephen Dorff, Brad Renfro, Norman Reedus, Matt Dillon, Fairuza Balk, Drea de Matteo, Vincent Pastore, Frankie Muniz
Directed by: Scott Kalvert
Written by: Paul Kimatian, Christopher Gambale
Distributed by: United Artists (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
MPAA Rating: R (strong violence, language, some drug content, brief sexuality)
Deuces Wild is something of a period film gone wild. It has all the trappings of a gang picture set in 1950's Brooklyn: macho studs with greasy hair and tattoos on their not-quite-bulging biceps; the heat of the city pavement in the summer; the local candy store hangout; the day at the public pool; romance that crosses the lines of gang rivalries; and all of the various caricatures of mafia underlings.
The problem is that this isn't the 1950's and everyone has seen West Side Story a thousand times. Of course, the differences between that 1961 musical and this film from The Basketball Diaries director Scott Kalvert run much farther and deeper than the simple matter of a long-dead genre, but the fact remains that Hollywood has visibly and scrupulously avoided the gang picture for a number of years.
In an effort to spice Deuces Wild up, Kalvert resorts to gimmickry. The soundtrack's usual offering of oldies-but-goodies (and truthfully, they aren't nearly as ubiquitous as in, say, 1996's Sleepers) is undercut by a Stewart Copeland score that relies heavily on grungy metal guitar chords, apparently to complement Kalvert's bizarre visual style. Numerous scenes, including the obligatory rumbles between the film's rival gangs, are backlit by a smoky bluish-white light -- almost as if the director had it in mind to turn a run-of-the-mill gang picture into an expressionist experiment.
It's hard to mistake Deuces as anything other than a standard issue film, though. Almost all of the characters are recycled, and have been recycled so many times that it's impossible for the audience to care about them -- mostly because viewers will be too busy trying to figure out where they've seen guys like Leon Anthony (Stephen Dorff) or Marco Vendetti (Norman Reedus, Blade II) before.
Leon heads up the title gang, the Deuces, who have a stated mission to keep their block in Brooklyn free of drugs after Leon's brother Allie Boy overdosed (the details of this pivotal encounter are strangely scarce, released through flashbacks in fits and starts) on the "junk." This doesn't sit well with Fritzy (Matt Dillon), the local Mafia kingpin, who resents a petty street gang trying to strong-arm him. Nor does it sit well with Marco -- leader of the Deuces' sworn enemies, the Vipers -- who has spent three years in prison because of Allie Boy's death and itches for revenge on Leon.
The film, predictably, boils down to a climactic rumble in which Leon and Marco go at it, but the movie never builds up to this. It just sort of happens. It could be because the Paul Kimatian and Christopher Gambale script doesn't have a solid story to tell, only 1950's gang clichés to spew. Rather than giving a plausible reason as to why it should take Leon and Marco the better part of two hours to finally solve their problems through a bit of old fashioned skull-cracking, Deuces Wild kills time by conjuring up images of Elvis Presley and Sandy Koufax.
Actors like Dorff, Dillon, and Brad Renfro (almost a Who's Who of once-promising talent) can go through material like this in their sleep. Although all of them comfortably inhabit their characters, none of them do anything to make them memorable -- most likely because the script, in its haste to tell a rather droll tale in about 95 minutes, relegates characterization to the back of the line.
The film does have its moments. There is a more interesting but mostly perfunctory subplot involving Leon's brother Bobby (Renfro), whose new girlfriend Annie (Fairuza Balk, Almost Famous) is the sister of one of the Vipers. It becomes Kalvert's conduit into an examination of the bonds of brotherhood -- Leon forbids Bobby to see Annie, but eventually Bobby stands up to Leon -- that form in the movie's mostly fatherless families. (The only men in the picture above the age of 40 are priests, abusive drunks, or drugstore/bodega types.) But Kalvert shows no interest in this thematically fertile ground, opting instead to steer the picture along the course of a guided tour of the Brooklyn neighborhood of Sunset Park in 1958 peppered with various and sundry gang adventures.
At times the setting for Deuces Wild feels less like the boroughs of New York City and more like a Hollywood-constructed fantasy neighborhood for the benefit of Kalvert's film and for the benefit of audiences seduced by clichés. But consider that the film was originally scheduled for release almost a year before it finally debuted in theaters, something that usually happens to movies that clearly don't benefit very many viewers.
all contents © 2002 Craig Roush