Director Joseph B. Vasquez knew his subject when he made movies based around the inner city ghettos of the Bronx and Harlem, NYC. A product of that certain time and place, child of a single, heroin addicted mother, Vasquez was no stranger to the rough streets of the South Bronx during the 70's and 80's. The fact that he managed to avoid the pitfalls of his upbringing and make it through film school, and wound up directing movies, is beyond impressive. This guy has my utmost respect.
After directing two excellent urban crime dramas, Vasquez turned his attentions to directing a comedy, about one day and one night in the life of four best friends.Willie and Tommy,are Black, Tommy is an aspiring actor who takes his dream seriously, while Willie would rather collect welfare and blame all of his problems on his skin color. Their two Puerto Rican buddies, Johnny and Fernando, also want to escape their realities in their own way. Johnny, (an early role for the excellent John Leguizamo) is an under-achiever, working in a supermarket because he doesn't have the self confidence to pursue a college education. He's also a hopeless romantic, in love with a girl he barely knows, who turns out to be anything but the innocent, sweet girl he imagined her to be. Fernando, the most messed up of all the guys in the bunch, is ashamed of his own Puerto Rican heritage, and tells people he is an Italian named Vinnie. Fernando has his pride eviscerated by a racist Italian cop, in one of the movie's best and most powerful dramatic scenes. In fact, all of the best scenes are the serious, dramatic ones, while the comedy doesn't always work, and is sometimes painfully juvenile and just not that funny. And this is the most unfortunate thing about the movie; if the director had played "Hangin' with the Homeboys" as a drama, with comedic overtones, we might have had an absolute classic. This is because drama is what Joe Vasquez did best. Before "Homeboys" Vasquez created two of the absolute BEST low budget, urban crime dramas of the 80's; His first film, called "Street Story" is a genre masterpiece, a description I rarely use when describing movies. Raw and realistic, "Street Story" tells the tale of an inner-city "hero,' famous in the neighborhood for his way with the ladies and his fighting prowess. Shot in grainy, 16 millimeter, this virtually unheard of genre classic is reminiscent of early Roberto Rossellini or Pier Paolo Pasolini, his "Accattone' in particular, the way his camera follows around it's main characters as we witness their sometimes comedic, but always tragic dealings with the pimps and prostitutes, hustlers and losers of the ghetto. He followed that movie up with "Bronx War," another fantastic urban crime film, where the dramatic elements were as exciting and involving as the violent gang war that the movie centers around. Somehow those two wonderful films slipped by, unnoticed and ignored. I'm guessing "Hangin With the Homeboys" was Vasquez' attempt to achieve some mainstream attention, and it worked.."Homeboys" is his most successful and well-known movie. His final movie, "Manhattan Merengue" was his failure. It couldn't even find distribution in North America, which greatly upset Joe Vasquez, who sadly ended his life after succumbing to the drug and crime lifestyle that he had managed to avoid for so long. For fans of "Hangin with the Homeboys" I sincerely recommend searching for the two earlier films of the short but fascinating career of Joseph B. Vasquez. "Street Story" especially, which has an almost 8 star rating here, proving that there are fans who recognize the excellence of this guy's early work..
Review of Hangin' with the Homeboys
