'Empire' squanders serious potential

Arenas Entertainment is the new Universal production company that is aimed primarily at a Latino audience. I don't have a Latin bone in my white-boy body, but even I feel a little offended when the first film from Arenas is such a ham-handed morality tale that smacks of cliché and stereotypes that squander serious potential for an excellent film. "Empire," the new film from Arenas, is little less than a crumbling kingdom that is defeated by its own vices and devices.\nJohn Leguizamo plays self-ascribed "street pharmacist" Vic Rosa, a Latino drug dealer working in the South Bronx. Vic is a self-made man, one who sees himself as the street-wise Rockefeller or Bill Gates. When introduced to young Wall-Street guru Jack (Peter Sarsgaard), Vic decides it's time to go legit, laundering his money through the Market in hopes of coming out clean and starting over. If you've ever once, in your entire life, seen a movie where a man tries to simply run away from his past and start all over, you should know exactly where this film is going.\nFranc. (notice the trendy twist with the period!) Reyes both wrote and directed 'Empire.' My advice to Franc. should he have to pick between the two: go for directing. Visually and stylistically, 'Empire' is rich in color and fluid camera shots. Granted, a lot of the time the film feels like the love-child of Santana and Snoop-Dogg, but it fits the world in which it comes from. What should have fit that world, but instead becomes biting self-parody, is the ridiculously brassy Latino score from Reuben Blades. Blades's soundtrack manages to turn the tired stereotype of Latin passion into nothing short of sheer laughable melodrama, more than once sinking 'Empire' like a soggy soap-opera.\nVic Rosa, though passionately portrayed by Leguizamo, becomes an utterly unrelatable character by the end of the film. After this self-centered money-grubber leaves his pregnant girlfriend on a corner in the Bronx, disowns his past and heritage, and manages to have his childhood best friend knocked off, are we really supposed to feel a grain of empathy when he gets what he deserves? And yet, herein lies the rub: when Rosa gets what's coming, 'Empire' turns into just another formula-ridden Hollywood morality fable with a shoddily shot (mind you stolen! 'American Beauty' anyone?), cop-out ending. Don't waste your time or money in support of this fallen 'Empire.'