BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

yogiwolfe Seriously, one big cliché. It was as if they watched every mob movie, combined it with Good Will Hunting, and threw in a little bad writing. Freddie Prinze with a Brooklyn accent? Seriously? The interaction between main characters is dull and predictable. I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone, especially someone who is actually from Brooklyn, for fear they would be very insulted. And the relationship between Freddie Prinze and Mena Suvari?? Are any of us supposed to care at all? Alec Baldwin is the only light in this otherwise dark film. This is a very shallow portrayal of complex themes. At least we still have the Departed.

Roland E. Zwick "Brooklyn Rules" is a ho-hum "Goodfellas" knock-off about three lifelong buddies (Freddie Prinze Jr., Scott Caan and Jerry Ferrara) and their involvement with the mafia. After a brief prologue set in 1974, the film moves quickly ahead to1985, where Mikey, Carmine and Bobby, now in their 20's, are attempting to make their way in a world where a mob boss by the name of Caesar Manganaro (Alec Baldwin), rules the streets with an iron fist. Mikey, the film's narrator, is the one most torn between loyalty to the neighborhood and his pals and a desire to experience life beyond this old familiar corner of Brooklyn. Carmine is the hard-nosed tough guy who wants nothing more than to be a card-carrying member of the Manganaro clan.Written by Terence Winter and directed by Michael Corrente, the film indulges in just about every mob-movie cliché one could possibly imagine, topped off by corny narration and banal wise-guy dialogue done in barely comprehensible dese-dem-dose accents. The movie earns a few points for at least trying to create a morally complex character in Mikey (though heavily borrowed from Michael Corleone), but the clichéd storytelling, lackluster performances and dull writing rob the film of most of its impact. There's a decided lack of energy and urgency in the direction as well, making "Brooklyn Rules" a very minor addition to the mob movie genre indeed.

dilbertsuperman First off let me say the casting for this movie was blatantly and utterly retarded and it killed the movie for me. One of the main bad guys who is supposed to be a tough Italian mobster is a coddled Irish blue-eyed fop named Alec Baldwin- every scene he is in fails miserably in giving the tough guy Italian one-two punchola- he looks like he needs an Irish coffee and a warmed towel.A lot of voice overs in this movie to cover ground that may have been too difficult for the director to imagine onto film. That was a big minus too.Plusses- da usual tuff guys talking crap and knockin heads and getting some respect when they is out on da town wit dere dames.Final conclusion: the equivalent of methadone for the heroin that is goodfellas, below sopranos in accuracy or believability- but watchable and occasionally pretty good, it loses points since the topic has been covered much, much better in a wide number of other films that came before it.THE PLOT: Some guys that grew up in the neighborhood feel some growing pains as their closeness to several wiseguys intrudes on their lives. Gotti is used as a backdrop for street cred. It would have been better if a lot of stuff the voice over was talking about was instead part of the actual film.Goodfellas, The Godfather, Donnie Brasco, and reservoir dogs do a better wiseguy coverage than this flick- but this IS a watchable addition to the list, so foggedaboudit.

homer_76179 For a movie with so much character focus it's surprising that none of the characters come off the screen (except for Alec Baldwin.) Nor do we care about any of them. The decent moments of this movie try to tug at our hearts, but we don't care because its a tired story with little substance.Freddie Prinze Jr. (Michael) is your average troubled Italian kid cum mob boss in the making. Er... wait. No he's not. That's what the movie we wanted would have presented. The movie starts with a long monologue explaining how growing up in Brooklyn has forced Michael to play by a new set of rules (hence the name). The problem is there's 2 moments in the movie were he even grasps at being a tough guy. In reality he's a quiet college boy who's worst faux pas is cheating on a test in school. What a rebel playing by his own set of rules. Oh wait, that was James Dean. Micheal lives in a world surrounded by wise guys yet he spends the length of the film shunning the world he lives in. Struggling to get out of Brooklyn and away from his stupid friends and the wise guys around the corner. How captivating! Not. Freddie is possibly the worst person to make into a Brooklyn hood. He looks like he popped out of a J. Crew catalog, not from Tony Soprano's Escalade. The action is slow. Which isn't surprising from Terence Winter. It was one of the problems with the Sopranos. At least The Sopranos had good dialog and great actors who absolutely played their parts to perfection. The Sopranos also had good story lines. This movie has none of that.Alec Baldwin is good as always (the little we see him), but his character has little point to the story other than to be the "mob" presence in most of the story line. Baldwin's character seems to represent everything in the movie that we didn't get. The only great parts of this movie have Baldwin doing his best to make something out of nothing and we get very little of that.When the pivotal action finally turns up (and we're begging for it) the movie seems it may become what we wanted it to be. Yet it still just doesn't pay off. It's recycled. We get a few scenes with Alec Baldwin doing the things we want a mob movie to do. Then we're forced to watch the main characters sit around and talk about it. The plot line runs without humps or spikes. There's no build or climax. The movie ends on the same level it started.We've seen this all before, and much better in A Bronx Tale, Goodfellas and pretty much every other coming of age mob story. Calling this a mob movie is kind. All mob references are seen from afar. We only catch whispers, see wise guys across a room and a great true-life mob storyline being played out and discarded on the TV. This is as much a mob movie as Python's "Holy Grail" was a movie about religion.The main problem with this movie is it can't decide what to focus on. There's no real plot. The mob aspect of the film tags along in the background and teases us with some good "Bada Bing" fun that never arrives. Is it a mob movie? A coming of age story? A love story? Who knows because it never grabs one story and holds on to make it worth it. There are no defining moments. There are no moments that explore character. We're left with a tangling mess that seems to have been put together from the "Mob Movie" cutting room floor.