My Way – A Gangster’s Saga (El Cuento De Un Pandillero/2007/Cinema Epoch DVD)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C     Extras: C-     Film: C+

 

 

Gangster stories have been done to death almost as badly as Horror stories of late, to the point that even an interesting story like J.A. Salgot’s My Way – A Gangster’s Saga (2007) about a hustler who has to juggle a dying marriage, father with Alzheimer’s and cops out to get him when an illicit deal goes wrong.  It sounds like a good set-up and is done with some acting and directing talent, but it is still everything we have seen before.

 

Fortunately, it does not wallow in pity or illicit appeals for the hero/anti-hero, but it still leans that way whether it is trying to portray the events more realistically and maturely than we have seen in most cases in the last ten or so years.  That may even cut it out from being a the kind of celebrated ugliness Hip Hop has made the far more complex Brian De Palma Scarface remake to be, but it does not add up to all it could have been at the end of 105 minutes and is uneven.

 

The letterboxed 1.85 X 1 image is guilty of the usual shaky camera work clichés, less realistic than ever, while the DVD is very detail weak and problematic throughout including aliasing errors.  That’s too bad, because when the image is stable, this does not look bad.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 sound is barley stereo and seems a generation down, as does the picture.  Stills are the only extra.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo