Bound By Honor

Directed by Taylor Hackford (An Officer and a Gentleman) from a script by Jimmy Santiago Baca, Jeremy Iacone, and Floyd Mutrux, this ugly three-hour snoozefest (1993) is apparently supposed to do for East LA Chicanos what the Godfather movies did for New York mafiosi, an ambition symptomatic of the problem here: who wants another Godfather when we already have three? The story follows a dozen years in the lives of three cousins (Jesse Borrego, Benjamin Bratt, and Damian Chapa), with many extended episodes in prison and minimal participation by women. Is it significant that so many characters in this movie get brutally murdered or mutilated while having sex? The ending is admirably anticlimactic and inconclusive, but given all the unpleasantness preceding it, it hardly seems worth the wait. With Enrique Castillo and Victor Rivers. (JR)

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