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Piņero (2001)
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Reviews Counted: 60
Fresh: 26
Rotten:34
Average Rating: 5.4/10
Consensus: Though Bratt is great in the title role, the biopic itself is messy and Piņero grows tiresome.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for drug use, strong language and sexuality
Runtime: 1 hr 43 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Dec 14, 2001 Limited
Box Office: $198,291
Synopsis: Miguel Piņero was a New York City poet and playwright who wrote what he knew: a world of "stabbing, shooting and dying." This gritty, non-linear biographical film presents Piņero's dark charisma... Miguel Piņero was a New York City poet and playwright who wrote what he knew: a world of "stabbing, shooting and dying." This gritty, non-linear biographical film presents Piņero's dark charisma and even darker life in all it's angry glory. A junkie, a drug dealer, and a thief, Piņero (played by Benjamin Bratt) spent time in SIng-SIng prison, an experience which was the basis of his most famous play, SHORT EYES, which won the Tony award in 1974. Piņero also pioneered the spoken-word poetry (the forebearer to rap and hip-hop) of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which he helped found. Mixing digital video in color with 16mm film in black and white, the film creates a convincingly harsh and lively portrait of life on the mean streets of Lower East Side Manhattan in the 1970s and '80s. There were a number of people in Piņero's life who recognized his genius and tried to save him from self-destruction: his mother (Rita Moreno), theater impresario Joseph Papp (Mandy Patinkin), and his longtime girlfriend (Talisa Soto). But the allure of crime and drugs won him over, and Piņero finally crashed and burned, dying young in 1988. This film is a passionate tribute to a passionate artist who remains an important Puerto Rican-American icon. [More]
Starring: Benjamin Bratt, Talisa Soto, Mandy Patinkin, Rita Moreno
Starring: Benjamin Bratt, Talisa Soto, Mandy Patinkin, Rita Moreno, Jaime Sanchez, Giancarlo Esposito
Director: Leon Ichaso
Director: Leon Ichaso
Screenwriter: Leon Ichaso
Producer: Fisher Stevens
Studio: Miramax Films
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Release:
Jul 16, 2002
Reviews for Piņero
Overlapping the artist's biography and his work, writer-director Leon Ichaso pointedly reflects the chaos in his subject's shortish life, but he links the artist's frustrations and talent in the usual manner: as cause and effect.
Flashily but irritatingly shot, full of unmotivated switches from colour to b/w, sudden flashbacks, mannered slow mo and jump cuts, this is hardly a subtle evocation of its subject's life.
Bratt's fast-talking, all-attitude interpretation is showboating without soul -- which can be said of the entire movie.
Who was Piņero, and more to the point, why should we care? Bratt brings him to life, but we come away appreciating his genius no more than we did before.
A movie of attitude that -- much like its main character -- consumes itself.
The only reason a person hops back-and-forth in one scene, from scene to scene, using (a) color film, (b) black-and-white stock, and (c) digital video (then back to (b), then (c) again, then (a), then ) is merely to do it because they can.
The film's cinematic technique is supposed to be vibrant and alive and reflect Pinero's variegated lifestyle, but it never gets to the soul of the man....
A vivid rendering of the complexities of the artist's soul, and a notable attempt to convey the trajectory of a volatile creative life.
This promises to be one of the better films of the year and Bratt's performance deserves at least a nomination...
Benjamin Bratt, the pretty boy once seen on the arm of America's sweetheart Julia Roberts, plays Piņero with a passion. It's a star-making performance.
Bratt's performance is as steady and consistent as the film is frustrating.
God is jealous of Benjamin Bratt, but He's coming around Bratt's performance [here] is electrifying and charismatic.
It attempts to champion the phony theme that poor, vulnerable artists should be forgiven their failings because they are so much more important than the rest of us.
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