Give director Paul Borghese credit for daring in giving his movie a title that evokes Sergio Leone’s two most famous epics. The trouble with doing that, of course, is that you better be prepared to deliver a movie on the same level.
The main character is Bobby Baldano, played by William DeMeo as a bantamweight tough who could probably hold up an all-night deli, but simply isn’t believable breaking arms and hunting down rats. Baldano has just been sprung from jail and immediately falls back into his old ways.
The garbled plot has Baldano seeking out the people who turned him in, wondering if he’s cut out for this life of crime, evading the cops, scheming with Ice-T and pursuing a tedious romance with a wannabe singer. There are two nearly indistinguishable voice-overs that don’t help.
And it’s all played with oppressive seriousness against an overbearing heavy-metal score. Anytime a gun appears on camera, the guitars kick in so loud it’s like Ted Nugent is having an orgasm.
The low-budget locales have a certain plausible raffishness, and there’s a supporting cast of excellent actors, including Armand Assante and Cathy Moriarty (“Raging Bull”) as Baldano’s parents. The pleasure of seeing Moriarty again, however, is tempered by the memories she brings of Martin Scorsese, and of the fact that “GoodFellas” is just one of the movies that did this all much better before.