Crime film bit-part player Clem Caserta tries his hand at screen writing, directing, and starring, and, sadly, it's tough to figure out which of the three hats looks best on him, since none of the three really look good at all.
Caserta is no Woody Allen, as this completely predictable and totally amateurish first effort clearly proves.
Shot on video tape rather than film, this no-star, no-budget, barely-an-hour-long indy tells the story of mafioso Jimmy Whispers, who returns home to his Mulberry Street neighborhood to find his old haunts taken over by the Red Dragons, a gang of drug dealing Chinese street thugs and shakedown artists.
Jimmy gathers together his old crew, and borrowing heavily from at least three plot elements of "A Bronx Tale", goes ahead and....wait, I don't have to tell you, do I? Undoubtedly you've figured out the rest of the story already.
If you like the mafia-film genre, though, it's worth watching this one strictly for laughs. That is, if you can find it anywhere.
I only happened upon a copy because a friend of mine is a Staten Island neighbor of Clem's, and if my friend read this review I have a feeling that Caserta's Mulberry Street crew - who were so obviously amateur actors that they could actually be real mafioso, for all I know - might be looking to try out their leg-breaking skills on me next.
The dialogue is mostly ridiculous, the fight scenes are possibly the worst I've ever seen, and the camera work is so poor that it barely rises above reminding one of a home video.
The film's one saving grace - if it has one at all - is that the actors at least look like mafia guys, and their accents and speech patterns, when you can look past the silly lines in the script, are somewhat realistic.
Caserta is no Woody Allen, as this completely predictable and totally amateurish first effort clearly proves.
Shot on video tape rather than film, this no-star, no-budget, barely-an-hour-long indy tells the story of mafioso Jimmy Whispers, who returns home to his Mulberry Street neighborhood to find his old haunts taken over by the Red Dragons, a gang of drug dealing Chinese street thugs and shakedown artists.
Jimmy gathers together his old crew, and borrowing heavily from at least three plot elements of "A Bronx Tale", goes ahead and....wait, I don't have to tell you, do I? Undoubtedly you've figured out the rest of the story already.
If you like the mafia-film genre, though, it's worth watching this one strictly for laughs. That is, if you can find it anywhere.
I only happened upon a copy because a friend of mine is a Staten Island neighbor of Clem's, and if my friend read this review I have a feeling that Caserta's Mulberry Street crew - who were so obviously amateur actors that they could actually be real mafioso, for all I know - might be looking to try out their leg-breaking skills on me next.
The dialogue is mostly ridiculous, the fight scenes are possibly the worst I've ever seen, and the camera work is so poor that it barely rises above reminding one of a home video.
The film's one saving grace - if it has one at all - is that the actors at least look like mafia guys, and their accents and speech patterns, when you can look past the silly lines in the script, are somewhat realistic.
