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Brooklyn Rules

If one thing New York City is known for, it's its stories. And it certainly has had plenty of stories, particularly revolving around the Italian mob scene. And despite how seemingly often New York-based dramas seem to revolve around the mob, Michael Corrente's Brooklyn Rules adds to the mix more than adequately.

In 1985 Manhattan, Michael Turner (Freddie Prinze Jr.) is a Columbia University student who is desperate to stay on the straight and narrow and go to law school. However, he finds himself divided between his ambitions and his childhood friends, Carmine Mancuso (Scott Caan) and Bobby Canzoneri (Jerry Ferrara), that he grew up on the streets with.

The good-natured Bobby is stuck in his old neighborhood with only a high school diploma, but merely wants to get a good job at the post office and marry his longtime girlfriend Amy (Monica Keena). Carmine, on the other hand, desires to not take his street-bound adulthood into obscurity, choosing to work in the mob for his longtime local idol, Caesar Manganero (Alec Baldwin), who works for the Gambino crime family.

In the midst of a budding relationship with well-to-do Connecticut psychology major Ellen (Mena Suvari), Michael find his hopes of getting out of the streets in great risk as he begins to inadvertently strike a friendship with Caesar through his ties with Carmine. Things turn ultimately tragic for the three friends after Michael gets into a fight at a diner and soon becomes a target for scrappy low life Gino (Christian Maelen), who's in cahoots with a rival mafia family.

While it offers very little that hasn't already been seen in the fantastic A Bronx Tale and countless other mob dramas and its period backdrop against the Gambino mob war in 1985 a bit muddled, Brooklyn Rules is sufficient enough due to its great story of male bonding.

While he undoubtedly gives great effort to the role, Freddie Prinze Jr. ultimately and unfortunately comes out woefully miscast as Michael. Scott Caan and Jerry Ferrara, on the other hand, manage to nail more effortlessly great performances in their roles as Michael's best friends.

Mena Suvari manages to be subtly efficient in her role as Michael's upper-class girlfriend Ellen. And Alec Baldwin, in particular, manages to show an incredibly slick and, at one point, even chilling presence here as mobster.

All in all, despite the presence of Prinze Jr. being a bit out of place here and the overall story adding very little new to the New York street drama, Brooklyn Rules is still highly worthy of viewing, particularly to fans of the genre, because of how effective it still manages to tell its story of male friendship.

Movie Grade: B-

Synopsis:

In 1985 Brooklyn, three boyhood

friends come of age on the streets where the violent have power. When one becomes enamored by the mafia lifestyle, all three friends are placed in grave danger as relationships and lives are threatened.