On B List of Movie Reviews

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A Bronx Tale (1993)

Rate: 8
Viewed: 11/21

11/21: Whaddya know? Robert De Niro...the director.

A Bronx Tale marks his debut, and he won't do it again until 2006 for The Good Shepherd. The coming-of-age film starts off awkwardly by borrowing too much from the first act of Goodfellas. Yet the more time is spent on plot development, the better the story is.

Then, there's the problem of young actors who seem miscast. In the long run, they somewhat look the part, but it's tough for me to get used to them. Robert De Niro is strangely not the star but shows up enough to lend some weight. Instead, it's Chazz Palminteri who takes over and does a decent job. Joe Pesci has a cameo appearance somewhere along the way.

Chazz Palminteri wrote the play, going back to 1989 when he was a struggling actor, and Robert De Niro saw his one-man act show on Broadway a year later. That's how A Bronx Tale became reality. Many instances in the story happened to Chazz, whose name is actually Calogero, when he was a kid. There's a lot of Italian authenticity throughout the film.

All in all, A Bronx Tale is surprisingly a well-made, sensitive movie that's solid in all aspects.

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