Arts & Entertainment
 

Weak 'Empire' crumbles while Leguizamo shines

By Ray Hafner
Senior Staff Writer

"Keep your homies close, keep your beef even closer," says Victor Rosa early on in Empire, aping one of the most famous lines from that seminal celebration of gangster life, The Godfather.

And so it goes for most of Franc Reyes' writing and directorial debut: The themes are timeless, the execution horribly dated and cliched. From the get go it's clear this movie is from a different era, as Rosa's voice over refers to the "Giuliani dictatorship" and characters talk about the market being "really hot right now."

Reyes' posits John Leguizamo's Rosa as a Bill Gates or a J.D. Rockefeller for the East Bronx, moving his brand of high-grade heroin as efficiently as FedEx moves packages. And given the current state of criminal corporate execs, he might not be too far off.

Reyes' biggest asset is Leguizamo, who oozes enough charm to turn this social deviant into someone you can actually root for. Anyone who's seen the trailer knows the movie follows Rosa as he meets up with a high-powered investment banker, drops a few million dollars in a high-risk investment opportunity only to have the banker — and the cash — disappear.

While the trailer sells this as a straight-up action movie, it's not. The focus is on Rosa as he moves from his neighborhood, lovingly shot in the opening scene, to the cold materialism in a Soho loft. In no time the hood rat starts saying things like "yada, yada." In a notable performance Delilah Cotto plays his girlfriend, Carmen, and is there to remind him of his true home.

The gunplay is never cinematically challenging or even very interesting. When people die it's violent, shocking and bloody, but the film hardly glamorizes violence. After the main shootout, just when the characters are celebrating having iced the other gangsters in typical money-rap fashion, a young boy surprises them and is killed. Violence has consequences and Reyes should be recognized for attempting to show those consequences.

Consequences are what this movie is all about and, in spite of the conventions, Empire manages to pack at least a little punch in delivering its message. The multicultural cast does fine work together and Leguizamo stands firm at the film's front.

Like many hip-hop films, the soundtrack is actually better than the film. With a lineup that includes Mobb Deep, India.Arie and Jon Secada the soundtrack flits back and forth between black and Latino culture as easily as the movie does.

So while Reyes has crafted a smarter-than-average gangster flick, with genuine moments of emotional intensity, he forgot to add the action that would have made it memorable.

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