Director: Robert De Niro
Stars: Robert De Niro, Chazz Palminteri, Lillo Brancato
This is the coming of age tale of ‘C’ (Brancato), who is pulled between the working class discipline of his father Lorenzo (De Niro) and the suave freedom and power of Sonny (Palminteri).
This is a simple coming of age story but it has a lot of power and deals with themes of love, fear, power, control etc. It’s set in the 60s so there’s a lot of cultural evolution happening and we see the world changing through the young boy’s lens. De Niro did a great job at directing. In particular I loved his use of music. One of my favorite genres of music is Doo Wop and there’s a heavy presence of it throughout the film, lending some extra emotion to scenes. There’s one scene that shows an attack on a record store, and as the viewpoint changes from the car to the store so does the music playing, and this serves to highlight the cultural differences. I thought this was a nice touch.
The film was well-paced and the struggle between Lorenzo and Sonny was always tense, and it was easy to see how this young boy could have been attracted to the life that Sonny was offering. But still he’s young and both Sonny and his father tell him, ‘you’ll understand when you’re older,’ and in the end he does. But it’s interesting that both father figures were trying to impart similar lessons, yet they both had very different ways of doing it. One of the main themes was the question, ‘is it better to be feared or loved?’ and I thought it was explored well.
I liked how the film had this sprawling, meandering feel to it yet it had focus and eventually came back in a full circle almost. I gave the story a sense of authenticity (indeed, it’s based on the writer’s own experiences, incidentally the writer is Chazz Palminteri). One of the biggest flaws is that C’s mother disappears halfway through the film and there’s nothing to say whether she’s still around or not, she literally just isn’t in it anymore, but there’s a lot packed into A Bronx Tale but it never feels dense and it has a very elegant, poignant ending. Sometimes there are films that I want to let settle so I sit through the credits, this is such a film. It’s a beautifully simple story that has a lot of power.
