Rating:8/10
Many people call A Bronx Tale a great gangster movie.  I wouldn't call it a gangster movie.  I would call this more of a coming of age story rather than a gangster movie.  Did it have gangsters?  It had a couple, but it didn't really center around them.  It centered around a boy who was befriended by a gangster.  Robert DeNiro made his directorial debut with this.  And he did a good job with this as he did with his acting.  Robert DeNiro didn't need the spotlight.  He played a bit character, though important.  He did a great job.  The main character was played in to different times.  Lillo Brancato and Francis Capra did a great job as Calogero.  I wasn't sure if Francis Capra could do the job he did with the role but he was very good.  Chazz Palminteri was awesome as the gangster, Sonny.  The one thing that Palminteri does is that he makes the cold blooded killer the hero.  That is something of a twist.  Sonny is not a good man, but he is looking after Calogero, making sure he doesn't do the same things he did to get him to that stage in life.  Palminteri also wrote this and developed his characters very well.  Even though this does have a positive message about the love unconditionally, this by no means is a family movie.  There is a lot of swearing and racial slurs to go around, with a lot of racism on both sides.  It wasn't portrayed as one groupl of people being more racist than the others.  This is a very intricate film and it is something you have to watch all the way through,  You just can't sneak off and come back in the middle of a scene as you can with some movies.