"Deuces Wild" takes place in Brooklyn in the summer of 1958, the year after the Dodgers left for Los Angeles and, as a voice-over tells us, "the streets of Sunset Park ran red." The two events aren't connected, although if they were, it might have at least been a more original movie.
Nope, "Deuces Wild" is basically a gang picture, mildly cloaked in nostalgia, where two groups of street punks —the Deuces and the Vipers — call each other names, spit and throw things and generally act like imbeciles.
Director Scott Kalvert shoots the fight scenes as if he were staging a literal head-bangers ball, with lots of loud music, fog machines, thunder and lightning. The only thing missing in all of the choppy slow-motion shots and quick edits is a sense of competence, which would at least have kept "Deuces" from plumbing the depths of unintentional comedy.
The movie opens in the pouring rain as Leon (Stephen Dorff), leader of the Deuces, carries his dead kid brother in his arms back to his brownstone. There, on the front porch, laughing at the scene, is Marco (Norman Reedus). "I told you not to sell him drugs," Leon bellows. "I warned you, Marco!"
Flash forward three years to the aforementioned summer of '58. Marco is getting out of jail and is eager to return to his old Brooklyn digs so he can sell some more dope and settle the score with Leon, who he figures ratted him out. Meanwhile, Leon's other brother, a dumb lug named Bobby (Brad Renfro), has fallen for Annie (Fairuza Balk), who, naturally, is related to one of Marco's henchmen.
The film continues to follow all of the genre's well-worn clichs, following the tragic heroes right up to the final, incoherent bloodbath. The movie does attempt to inject a little brotherly pathos into the proceedings, and Renfro and Dorff are game.
But it's hard to get swept up in the numbskull nostalgia that has these guys remembering the good old days of "Pee Wee (Reese), Duke (Snider) and Koufax," when Sandy Koufax was little more than a promising relief pitcher during his early days at Ebbets Field. Maybe the filmmakers' affinity for fog machines clouded their thinking. No matter — the mists of time are already swallowing this one.
"Deuces Wild" is rated R for strong violence (beatings, gunplay and explosive mayhem), occasional use of strong, sexually related profanity, some drug content, brief simulated sex and brief female nudity. Running time: 97 minutes.