The other day I received a film called Brooklyn Rules from Amazon, through their ‘Vine’ programe.  I’ll admit it was not one I had heard of before so I approached it with no expectationsone way or another. For what its worth, here is what I thought:

I like this film, despite the way it can’t make up its mind whether it wants to be a gangster movie, a buddy film or a coming of age film. I may not return to it again, but it held my attention for all of its hour and a half – and at only an hour and a half it did not wear out its welcome.

Basically it is the story of three friends: one is a bit of a con-man who is at college with ambitions to become a lawyer, one is happy to live a normal, blue-collar life in a steady job, and the other is self-admiring, hanging on the fringes of the local mob and trying to get more involved with them.

The film starts with a narrated sequence introducing the three main characters while they are still at school. In the course of this it displays their character traits in a way that really helps you to identify with them later in the story and feel part of the gang when they make their in-jokes.

Alec Baldwin plays the local neighbourhood mafia boss: a character who does some terrible things in a charismatic way – watch out for the bacon slicer scene!

As a Brit who only set foot in Brooklyn for a few minutes a few years after this film was set I have no way of knowing how realistic it is, but it feels real to me and that’s the important thing.

This may be a film to rent rather than buy, but it certainly deserves to be seen.