Over the past few years, anything that featured Edward James Olmos left be with a bit of mixed feelings about the individual. There's no doubt that he's a very talented performer, but it's his film choices that gets my goat. But when seeing the movie "American Me" knowing that he not only starred, but directed the movie, I actually was starting to take him in considerably. Knowing that such a talented performer being held back by poor decisions, we surely won't find him being wasted by his own movie.
Based on the life of Mexican mob kingpin Rodolfo Cadena (founder of La Eme), it shouldn't come as a surprise that there will some dramatization being that it's a biopic and not a documentary. This movie follows his hard-fought life, this movie is as simple as it gets, the story of how La Eme started. Montoya Santana (who was in his younger days played Panchito Gomez, later played by Olmos), is a Chicano youth growing up in Los Angeles' Barrio section forms a posse with Mundo (Richard Coca later Pepe Serna) and JD Morgan (Steve Wilcox/ William Forsythe) and dubbed the group under the moniker La Primera. One day, they took a detour through a rival gang's hangout spot, they break into a diner. The owner, who live nearby to them, catches them and sends them to juvenile hall and JD gets a prosthetic leg. This further explains why Roldolfo befriends a Caucasian guy who speaks with a Latino accent and is part of their circle. These events lead up to the gang going to jail and the formation of La Eme comes into fruition.
The film stands out as a personal pet project for Olmos as he informs his audience about the dangers of joining a gang. He speaks truly of this cause from experience being born in the Barrios himself. And even casted real prisoners from Folsom Prison as extras to prove his points.
His choices of what he brings into his movie is quite interesting and very fascinating. Such examples including the opening settings of his interpretation of the 1940's Zoot Suit Riots and it features a city war between vicious seamen in the California area as they attack Latinos predominately clad in Zoot Suits who represented Latino pride which lead to friction between Mexican-Americans and Caucasian-Americans which was what spawned gangster life among Latinos in the California area.
The soundtrack was quite impressive too featuring an eclectic array of classic songs from the 1950, 1960's and the 1970's including Ike and Tina Turner's version of Sly and the Family Stone's "I Want to Take you Higher" and Latino group Los Lobos doing Junior Walker's "Shotgun" amongst others. The film is generally one big flashback focusing on Santana's story from his childhood to his prison sentence and his narration is crisp and very well detailed.
"American Me" will not bite you to get attention, nor will it annoy you in any way. But what it does is it'll tell a wonderful story. And even you root for Santana all the way, he's in no way by any means an inspiring hero we can idolize with. Even when he tries to become a better more likable individual, we can't ignore the fact that he is a thug and a brute who gets what he deserves. The movie can be pretty ugly at times. Not Scorsese ugly, but violent enough to keep our attention going. It's a bit gooey with the rape scenes, but it still contributes in keeping with the flow of the story. Overall it's an authentic and captivating film that has a steady flow about a subject never really mentioned in movies.
Based on the life of Mexican mob kingpin Rodolfo Cadena (founder of La Eme), it shouldn't come as a surprise that there will some dramatization being that it's a biopic and not a documentary. This movie follows his hard-fought life, this movie is as simple as it gets, the story of how La Eme started. Montoya Santana (who was in his younger days played Panchito Gomez, later played by Olmos), is a Chicano youth growing up in Los Angeles' Barrio section forms a posse with Mundo (Richard Coca later Pepe Serna) and JD Morgan (Steve Wilcox/ William Forsythe) and dubbed the group under the moniker La Primera. One day, they took a detour through a rival gang's hangout spot, they break into a diner. The owner, who live nearby to them, catches them and sends them to juvenile hall and JD gets a prosthetic leg. This further explains why Roldolfo befriends a Caucasian guy who speaks with a Latino accent and is part of their circle. These events lead up to the gang going to jail and the formation of La Eme comes into fruition.
The film stands out as a personal pet project for Olmos as he informs his audience about the dangers of joining a gang. He speaks truly of this cause from experience being born in the Barrios himself. And even casted real prisoners from Folsom Prison as extras to prove his points.
His choices of what he brings into his movie is quite interesting and very fascinating. Such examples including the opening settings of his interpretation of the 1940's Zoot Suit Riots and it features a city war between vicious seamen in the California area as they attack Latinos predominately clad in Zoot Suits who represented Latino pride which lead to friction between Mexican-Americans and Caucasian-Americans which was what spawned gangster life among Latinos in the California area.
The soundtrack was quite impressive too featuring an eclectic array of classic songs from the 1950, 1960's and the 1970's including Ike and Tina Turner's version of Sly and the Family Stone's "I Want to Take you Higher" and Latino group Los Lobos doing Junior Walker's "Shotgun" amongst others. The film is generally one big flashback focusing on Santana's story from his childhood to his prison sentence and his narration is crisp and very well detailed.
"American Me" will not bite you to get attention, nor will it annoy you in any way. But what it does is it'll tell a wonderful story. And even you root for Santana all the way, he's in no way by any means an inspiring hero we can idolize with. Even when he tries to become a better more likable individual, we can't ignore the fact that he is a thug and a brute who gets what he deserves. The movie can be pretty ugly at times. Not Scorsese ugly, but violent enough to keep our attention going. It's a bit gooey with the rape scenes, but it still contributes in keeping with the flow of the story. Overall it's an authentic and captivating film that has a steady flow about a subject never really mentioned in movies.