My review was written in June 1990 after watching the movie on Westport Entertainment video cassette.
A rites of passage story takes an amoral turn in "Emperor of the Bronx", a direct-to-video feature. Some good acting makes this one watchable.
Filmmakers Joseph Merhi and Richard Pepin expanded from their West Coast base to do some Gotham shooting on this pic. Alex D'Andrea toplines as an aimless Bronx youth who strays with his buddy Charlie Ganis into petty crimes until a rival gang cuts his finger off.
The self-styled emperor D'Andrea flees the city, to live in L. A. working as a bartender for his uncle. He falls in love with an older singer (Leisha Sukary), gets lessons on living from crusty William Smith and improbably shoots all the bad guys in a misguided coming of age climax.
D'Andrea's thesping is good but his central character is so unsympathetic it makes the usual Eric Roberts role (e.g., in "Star 80" or "King of the Gypsies") look like a pussycat. Audienced sympathy during this overlong opus wil probably stray to Sukary, who belts five songs (several she co-wrote) well or to Smith, a bad good guy this time instead of his usual good bad guy.
Tech credits, especially Judy Yonemoto's makeup effects, are above average.
A rites of passage story takes an amoral turn in "Emperor of the Bronx", a direct-to-video feature. Some good acting makes this one watchable.
Filmmakers Joseph Merhi and Richard Pepin expanded from their West Coast base to do some Gotham shooting on this pic. Alex D'Andrea toplines as an aimless Bronx youth who strays with his buddy Charlie Ganis into petty crimes until a rival gang cuts his finger off.
The self-styled emperor D'Andrea flees the city, to live in L. A. working as a bartender for his uncle. He falls in love with an older singer (Leisha Sukary), gets lessons on living from crusty William Smith and improbably shoots all the bad guys in a misguided coming of age climax.
D'Andrea's thesping is good but his central character is so unsympathetic it makes the usual Eric Roberts role (e.g., in "Star 80" or "King of the Gypsies") look like a pussycat. Audienced sympathy during this overlong opus wil probably stray to Sukary, who belts five songs (several she co-wrote) well or to Smith, a bad good guy this time instead of his usual good bad guy.
Tech credits, especially Judy Yonemoto's makeup effects, are above average.