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A Bronx Tale
1993
In his directorial debut, two-time Academy Award-Winner Robert De Niro stars as Lorenzo Anello, a hard-working bus driver, who must stand up to the local mob boss if he is to keep his son from falling into a life of crime. The streets of the Bronx are a tough place for a kid to grow up, you learn fast or lose everything. .. Read more
| Starring | Robert De Niro, Chazz Palminteri, Francis Capra, Taral Hicks |
|---|---|
| Director | Robert De Niro |
| Genres | Drama |
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A Bronx Tale
In his directorial debut, two-time Academy Award-Winner Robert De Niro stars as Lorenzo Anello, a hard-working bus driver, who must stand up to the local mob boss if he is to keep his son from falling into a life of crime.
The streets of the Bronx are a tough place for a kid to grow up, you learn fast or lose everything. Lorenzo's son Calogero learns about the virtues of hard, honest work from his father, who owns nothing but his integrity; but he learns about easy money and life on the streets from the man who owns them, a mobster called Sonny (Chazz Palminteri). Now Calogero must choose between earning respect like his father, or commanding it like Sonny. Always one step away from a broken bottle, a pistol whipping or a shotgun blast, one young man, torn between two worlds just a city block apart, is about to learn that the streets run two ways. For every cent of easy money, there's a tough, and sometimes deadly, lesson to be learned.
| Starring | Robert De Niro, Chazz Palminteri, Francis Capra, Taral Hicks |
|---|---|
| Director | Robert De Niro |
| Studio | UNIVERSAL PICTURES UK |
| Run time | DVD: 1 hr 56 mins |
| Certificate | |
| Genres | Drama |
| Language | English |
| Released | DVD: 30 Apr 2001 Production year: 1993 |
| Format | DVD |
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Critics' reviews (6)
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Adapted by The Usual Suspects's Chazz Palminteri from his own play, this is an intelligent portrait of a time (the 1960s) and place (New York's Little Italy) that eschews some of the more extravagant sweeps of Martin Scorsese, probably cinema's most famous chronicler of Italian-American life. Goodness is a hard quality to depict without sentimentality, yet Robert De Niro manages to convey it well, as a bus driver whose impressionable young son is attracted to a sharp-dressing local gangster (played by Palminteri). Lillo Brancato gives a good account of the confused teenager, but it's De Niro's sense of place and pace (this was his directorial debut) and Palminteri's autobiographical insights into the neighbourhood that make this such a compelling picture.
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"...GOODFELLAS with heart, A BRONX TALE represents a wonderfully vivid snapshot of a colorful place and time, as well as a very satisfying directorial debut by Robert De Niro..."
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Most helpful member's review
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9 out of 10 people found this review helpful
You can't really go wrong with de Nero who is always watchable. For once a gangster film without the continuous all action mayhem that we seem to have to suffer these days. Instead it is nicely paced, with the violence mainly implied.
The story is straightforward, a local gangster befriends a young boy and we see him growing up wide eyed and gradually no longer innocent. Meanwhile his upright father goes on driving his local bus and trying to stop his son having an unsuitable friendship. In the end thought we realise the gangster has in his own way protected the boy and even educated in the ways of the world. -
Most recent members' review
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9 out of 10 people found this review helpful
You can't really go wrong with de Nero who is always watchable. For once a gangster film without the continuous all action mayhem that we seem to have to suffer these days. Instead it is nicely paced, with the violence mainly implied.
The story is straightforward, a local gangster befriends a young boy and we see him growing up wide eyed and gradually no longer innocent. Meanwhile his upright father goes on driving his local bus and trying to stop his son having an unsuitable friendship. In the end thought we realise the gangster has in his own way protected the boy and even educated in the ways of the world. -
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