Brooklyn Rules

The barely released 2007 gangland drama Brooklyn Rules boasts one of the scribes from The Sopranos (Terence Winter), Alec Baldwin from The Departed as a mob boss, and the novel-like nostalgia of Goodfellas. Unfortunately, it also has all the credibility and dramatic urgency of Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. Freddie Prinze Jr. plays a Brooklyn-bred youth who attends college to escape the trappings of the neighborhood mob, but is drawn back when his friend (Scott Caan) gets in over his head. The film is irreparably hampered by Prinze’s inability to believably play an Italian, a Brooklynite, a tough guy, or even an English-speaking, oxygen-breathing biped. Michael Corrente’s dull direction and Winter’s inane script, which plays like it was written by Scorsese-obsessed teens, don’t help.