Tales of Gang Life In the L.A. Barrio

Newsday; 4/30/1993; Jack Mathews

Newsday

04-30-1993

Tales of Gang Life In the L.A. Barrio

By Jack Mathews. STAFF WRITER

KEYWORD HIT
* * (two stars) BOUND BY HONOR. (R) Taylor Hackford's
overlyambitious three-hour saga about three Latino cousins whose lives
are changed by a gangfight in L.A. With Damian Chapa, Jesse Borrego,
Benjamin Bratt. At area theaters.

BEFORE TAYLOR Hackford became a movie director, he won two Emmys for
work done as an investigative news reporter for Los Angeles public
television station KCET, and he was credited with helping TV move into
the rock-and-roll generation with his notions for staging broadcast
performances.
With that background, you would expect his films to reflect both a
sense of dramatic realism and a cutting-edge hipness. Instead, he has
made a string of slick, over-the-top major studio movies that wallow in
cliche, sentiment and melodrama.
However, none of his previous six films - from the idealized '50s
rock-and-roll movies "The Idolmaker" and "La Bamba" to the contemporary
dramas "An Officer and a Gentleman" and "White Nights" - was as
frustratingly bogus as his three-hour, prison / barrio epic "Bound By
Honor."
The convoluted saga, which repeats themes, characters and even
dialogue from last year's less polished but more believable "American
Me," follows the lives of three Latino cousins, from their late-teens
as gang members in East Los Angeles to a point 12 years after a lethal
run-in with a rival gang sets the trio on radically different paths.
One cousin, the blue-eyed, half-white Miklo (Damian Chapa), is sent
to San Quentin for murder, where, to gain acceptance by a powerful
Latino prison gang known as La Onda, he commits a second murder.
Another cousin, the talented artist Cruz (Jesse Borrego), emerges from a
hospital lame, morphine-addicted and self-destructive. The third, the
ex-boxer Paco (Benjamin Bratt), joins the Marines rather than go to
jail, and returns to the barrio as a tough undercover cop.
Thus, the scene is set for some traumatic family reunions, and a ton
of contrived melodrama.
"Bound By Honor," which is loosely based on the reflections of Latino
poet Jimmy Santiago Baca, who co-wrote the screenplay, is at its heart
about the importance of family in the Latino culture, and how the deep
loyalties inspired in children actually predispose them to dead-end gang
life in the barrio.
Exploring that theme is worthwhile, to be sure, and the first halfhour
of "Bound By Honor" holds out that promise. But once introduced, the
theme is relegated to the background, coming forward only when it's
needed to provide motivation for intrigue and mayhem that would be
monotonous in a movie half its length.
Of the several stories being told, the one that interests Hackford
most is the war between black, white and Latino gangs over control of
the drug business inside the prison. It's told as a movie within the
movie, "Godfather Behind Bars," with Miklo duplicating the feat of
Michael Corleone, growing into the role of the San Quentin don.
Hackford even included a Francis Ford Coppola cinematic trick,
cutting back and forth from a string of calculated assassinations
ordered by Miklo to an ironically festive Day of the Dead parade in East
Los Angeles. I suppose it figures that the most interesting scene would
be one Hackford borrowed.
To give the director his due, he made a great effort to give his film
an authentic look and feel. He shot it mostly within the confines of San
Quentin and East Los Angeles, two different kinds of prisons, using
inmates / residents as extras. And his choice of having the Latino
characters speak naturally, colloquially, blending their Spanish with
English (often in the same sentences), gives their dialogue a natural
spontaneity.
But Hackford squanders all of that actuality on formulaic tales
unworthy of it. The central story - Miklo's transformation from gang
hanger-on to wily crime lord - is badly undermined by the inexperience
of Chapa. The young actor whips up some ferocious scowls and banty
rooster poses, but there isn't a moment when you're unaware of how hard
he's working.
The actor we're most likely to see again is Bratt, a Peruvian with a
great face and a powerful screen presence. If Hackford had used Paco's
transformation as the movie's centerpiece instead of Miklos', we at
least would have had an interesting actor to watch.
As it is, "Bound By Honor" is one of the longest three-hour movies
you'll ever see.

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