'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. John 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. Franc. (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.
