BROOKLYN RULES — ** — Freddie Prinze Jr., Scott Caan, Alec Baldwin; rated R (violence, profanity, sex).
The friends, the neighborhood, the loyalty, the bloodshed, Alec Baldwin playing a bad wise guy (no, he doesn't leave answering-machine messages) ... feel free to stop me if all this sounds familiar.
Completed in 2004, "Brooklyn Rules" may be screenwriter Terence Winter's (a frequent "Sopranos" scribe) attempt to write from his own life, but this tale of a trio of friends from boyhood negotiating the streets of mob-infested Brooklyn still feels warmed over at best. It's also a disappointing return to the director's chair for Michael Corrente, whose last film was 2000's underappreciated soccer film "A Shot at Glory."
Nobody's going to quibble with Scott Caan as a preening Brooklynite named Carmine, or even with "Entourage's" Jerry Ferrara as Carmine's cheapskate boyhood friend, Bobby. And Baldwin, as a mob boss who both assigns and administers payback? Puh-lease! The guy could play a hood like "Brooklyn Rules"' Caesar Manganaro from his death bed.
But Freddie Prinze Jr. playing a charismatic con man who dreams of life across the bridge and is one unholy alliance away from being another Carmine? That's a harder swallow. And since Prinze's character, Michael, is most precisely drawn — and Prinze is narrating — a believable Michael seems key to propelling the scenario past clichedom.
Prinze isn't up to it. He's too preppy, and the accent conveys acting school rather than street. When Michael hooks up with whitebread fellow Columbia student Ellen (Mena Suvari), there's no danger there. Not even when Michael gets into an ill-advised fight with a mob hothead.
By night, Michael works in a butcher shop where the occurrence of hits and torture seem to be as prevalent as rump roast. By day, he cons his way out of taking important midterms at Columbia. Carmine wants in on the mob action (at one point, he hijacks a truck carrying a load of trivia board games). Bobby eyes a career in the U.S. Postal Service.
Interspersed among assorted murders and character-defining set pieces (yeah, we get that Bobby counts his pennies), Winter is looking to chronicle a personal journey, except we've seen this before. By film's end, when Michael is summoned back to Brooklyn for a momentous occasion, you'll know every one of those alleged "rules" by heart.
And, in all likelihood, you won't much care.
"Brooklyn Rules" is rated R for violence, pervasive language and some sexual content. Running time: 99 minutes.