Wannabes (2000)
Review by Doc Ezra
Film:
DVD:

Written by William DeMeo
Directed by Charles A. Addessi and William DeMeo
Starring William DeMeo, Conor Dubin, Joe Viterelli, and Joseph D’Onofrio

Features:

• Trailer
  

Released by: Artisan
Region: 1
Rating: R
Anamorphic: Nope; appears in full frame.

My Advice: Rent it if you can’t resist wiseguy flicks, pass otherwise.

Angelo (DeMeo) and his kid brother Paulie (Dubin) are just regular neighborhood guys, but life in the neighborhood just isn’t enough for Angelo. He’s got bigger plans, despite Paulie’s worrying. After a couple of chance encounters with local mafia boss Santo (Viterelli), Angelo decides that the best way to escape their crappy waiter jobs and scrabbling for rent existence is to impress Santo, to get “made.”

So he and his boys start small, borrowing heavily from a loan shark to start making book. Despite a rough start, Angelo and crew begin rolling in the dough pretty quickly. Angelo’s still not content, though, and broadens their operations to include loan sharking and a petty protection racket before finally making a move to get noticed by Santo.

Santo, impressed by Angelo’s initiative and bank roll, lets the crew join up, and in short order, Angelo is knocking on the doorstep of made manhood. Of course, there’s this little budding resentment from Santo’s son Vinnie aimed squarely at Angelo, and it looks evident from the get-go that things will ultimately come to a nasty, nasty head for Angelo and company. Angelo sidelines Paulie to keep him safe, and sinks deeper and deeper into the wiseguy world.

Wannabes is a pretty standard rags-to-riches mafia story, which is pretty much its greatest weakness. Most of the performances are decent if not good, but the plot is familiar to pretty much anybody that’s ever watched more than a couple of mob movies. The subplots of Santo’s health and Paulie’s girlfriend seem sort of tacked on, though at least in the former case it has direct bearing on the main plot.

DeMeo and Viterelli turn in excellent performances. D’Onofrio’s performance as Vinnie is a little cartoonish, more caricature than character, but it’s the only really weak spot in the film’s otherwise decent cast. About the only other weakness in the film is that, for a gangster flick, there’s precious little gangstering going on. A couple of beatings, a shooting or two, but none of the guns-blazing action typical of the genre until the last ten minutes of the picture.

With a largely unsatisfying ending, the movie makes a decent rental for hardcore mob fans, but little more. If you’re not a big fan of the genre, there’s really not much here for you to enjoy. The performances aren’t strong enough to hold interest throughout the picture, and the plot is too familiar to escape the long shadows of the genre’s true greats.