Boy loves the sister of a rival gang member, does this sound familiar? Yep, it sounds like West Side Story, which is an adaptation of Romeo & Juliet. Luckily, Deuces Wild is not a musical, though this might have helped.

The boy is Bobby (Brad Renfro from Ghost World), who is the brother of Leon Anthony (Stephen Dorff from Blade) the leader of the Deuces gang in 1958 Brooklyn. The girl is Annie (Fairuza Balk, Almost Famous), whose brother is Jimmy Pockets (Balthazar Getty), one of the top people in the rival Viper gang. The Vipers are looking to move drugs into the neighborhood, while the Deuces are against drugs. Leon specifically formed the Deuces to keep drugs out of the neighborhood after his and Bobby’s brother Alley Boy (Blake Bashoff) died from a drug overdose. These drugs were provided by Jimmy Pockets and the Viper leader Marco Vendetti (Norman Reedus, Blade 2). Marco then went to prison for a few years for his role in selling the drugs. With Marco now out of jail he is looking to bring the drugs back in with the assistance of the local mafia guy Fritzy (Matt Dillon, Wild Things). Anyway, the two gangs fight each other, people get hurt, people die, Bobby and Annie love each other despite family objections.

Some others of note in the film are Vincent Pastore, Joshua Leonard, James Franco (Spider-Man), Louis Lombardi, Frankie Muniz (Big Fat Liar), Drea de Matteo, Nancy Cassaro, Deborah Harry, and Max Perlich (Blow). Paul Kimatian and Christopher Gambale wrote this soap opera-esque movie, while director Scott Kalvert tried to add big action scenes with horror movie type settings. This approach added up to a very haphazard film.

Deuces Wild seemed to take a shotgun approach to the story telling in that they fired a wide array of storylines at the audience in small segments in the hope that they would strike a cord of interest with anyone in the audience. Well, it didn’t work at all. What you end up with is a bad movie that doesn’t really know what it is. This all adds up to one couch for the About-Movies.com rating and another miserable failure for struggling MGM.

That's all folks.

Last updated: Thursday, March 20, 2008 02:48:24 AM

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