Empire | Review

Film lacks the edge to become the urban drama it aspires to be.

Think Goodfellas without the charm, think of Wall Street without the portfolios and replace television’s Sex in the City gang of gabby girls for guys with Nintendo thumbs and basically you’ve got the un-tough and the unmoving drama entitled, Empire,- a film that hardly provokes imagery of any of the true grit that it takes to live the kind of gangsta lifestyle that is minimally referred to in this dormant directorial debut from helmer Franc Reyes.

Our hombre-Vic Rosa (John Leguizamo-Ice Age) walks around town with a giant gold letter “G” around his neck- which represents the painful memory of a dead childhood friend and also comes back to hunt him about a time when everything wasn’t about losing the blood in one’s body. The film length narration of Leguizamo commences with the explanation of the zoning rules of the drug-trade in the Bronx, which is equally split into individual territories and happens to cause more headaches than solutions. It’s a tough world, but one wouldn’t know it from the watching these kids wasting away in front of the Playstation, and from the drug lords taking pleasure from going into the streets to protect their investments-after all, one street corner alone represents a good 30 G’s per week. A haphazard encounter with an investment broker playboy named Jack (Peter Sarsgaard-The Salton Sea) gives him the hope of de-versifying his fortune-the terrain then becomes clear for a narrative where the viewer can see an ending a mile away. A ridiculous subplot of the protagonist changing his vida loca life for a Martha Stewart home accompanied by his pregnant Latina girlfriend is all but witty and becomes hard to believe in as soon as he drops the G in favor of another G as in Giorgio Armani. The character’s life seems to go tragically by the waste side-and so does any the viewer’s hopes of getting anything out of this film experience. Just like Denise Richardson’s (Undercover Brother) and Isabella Rossellini’s (Roger Dodger) character,-this film comes off looking like a fake American twenty dollar bill-the colors are off and the quality is bad….I think I needed a lot more than a Columbian flag in the distance to convince me of her role as the mama mafia kingpin and his posse of bullies from the Bronx come across looking more like cartoon characters than threatening money-hungry murderers.

Like the literal weight around his neck, and the pressure on his shoulders-this film is boringly paced and annoyingly predictable and weighed down by this annoying plot and subplot treatment. The characters are cheap and so are the actor’s performances, and even if Leguizamo put in the performance of a lifetime this poorly structured film still couldn’t make it afloat. I never believed in these gang brotherhoods and even less in the relationships between the girlfriend and boyfriends and especially less with the business relationship between the street wise entrepreneur and his new associate. There are some nice shots from cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau, the urban scapes suit the story well, but all this seems to lose itself in the peril of a director searching for a style.

Sadly, Reyes’ Empire has very little going for it, the poor dialogue, poor acting and the lowly entertaining script make for a hard two-hour watch, instead rent Goodfellas with some Mexican food if you want the effect that they were trying to get with this one.

Rating 0.5 stars