Kings of South Beach DVD: Review By Brian Gallagher

There are certain people in Hollywood who have a few big projects and then seemingly disappear from the movie scene for X amount of years. Nicholas Pileggi is one of them. After writing the book "Wise Guy" which was turned into the movie Goodfellas, which he collaborated on the screenplay for with director Martin Scorcese, he did the very same thing with Casino, turning his book into a movie, writing the script with Scorcese. After a few brief stints in TV, it seems Pileggi went off the grid, only to reappear this year writing and producing this flick Kings of South Beach. It's right up his alley. A true story of the guy who, in essence, turned South Beach from a retirement area to the glitzy glamorousy area it is today. Of course, he didn't do it legitimately, with mob ties, drugs, violence, booze and women aplenty. Even though this is right up his alley, it seems he made a few wrong turns along the way because this isn't even close to being in the same neighborhood as his previous flicks.

I really have no idea why he opted to have this as a TV movie instead of an R-rated theatrical feature. You get the feeling that we're just skimming the surface of this world and that by having this on television, we're deprived of the true nature of this underworld we only get a tunnel-vision view of. No, this didn't really need to be a three-hour epic gangster flick like Goodfellas or Casino, but I get the feeling that there could've been a lot more to tell here, and in a much better fashion.

We do get a nice acting tandem from Jason Gedrick as Chris Troiano, the club owner-turned-Miami-superstar and Donnie Wahlberg as Andy Burnett, a displaced thug from New York who gets a small job with Troiano and rapidly rises to become Troiano's right-hand man. They really have some great chemistry here and, although many times the lines they're fed from Pileggi lack in many areas, they form a great team on the screen. The supporting cast is virtually irrelevant, with small roles from small-timers like Nadine Velasquez (My Name is Earl) as Troiano's partner at the club and a tiny tiny part for Steven Bauer (Scarface) as a mob figurehead. It's really a two-man show and Gedrick and Wahlberg do their damndest to carry us through this movie on their shoulders alone.

The real weakness, aside from the medium, is Pileggi's script, but perhaps that's just because it's so heavily handcuffed by the medium itself. I don't know. Maybe Pileggi tried to sell this to every studio in town and the only thing he could get was a TV deal out of it. It sounds viable, I guess. Lets face it. Donnie Wahlberg and Jason Gedrick arent' A-listers here... It's not only the material itself that is handcuffed but the length itself. We're just totally pushed through the first act like unwelcomed guests at this club. They rush the first 20 or 30 minutes so much that it feels like Pileggi's original script was probably much longer and they didn't do such a good job transitioning it to a TV-friendly length. I'm guessing there wasn't enough for a mini-series, but too much for a regular TV movie, which leaves us with this hacked-up rush job of a TV movie.

It's sad, really. Kings of South Beach could've probably made a really slick mini-series on Showtime or any other edgy network. It probably could've been made into a very good feature film, with the right budget, cast and a more developed script. It's just too bad that this story had to end up being told in such a shoddy finished product like this.

Move along. There's nothing to see here...

The disc is presented in the anamorphic widescreen format, in the 1.78:1 aspect ratio.

You can hear the incredibly corny soundtrack and score through the Dolby Digital 5.1 format.

The front has an interesting design with shots of Wahlberg and Gedrick back to back with their guns up, the title card below it and a couple of the girls below that. The back has a few small random shots, a synopsis a bigger shot of a shoot-out/car chase along with the billing block and tech specs. Not too shabby.

Kings of South Beach had potential up the wazoo. A hard-hitting story about a guy who came from a shady past and tried to make it in Miami, basically transforming the whole town by himself with his trendy club and shady dealings. If Pileggi would've mailed a theatrical version of this script to his old buddy Marty, I'd likely be singing a much different tune right now because it surely wouldn't have been the watered-down version of this interesting story that I just watched.