Of mobsters and fathers: Chazz Palminteri captivates in 'A Bronx Tale'

Chazz Palminteri in A Bronx Tale.  

Mea culpa. We went into A Bronx Tale expecting a one-man, non-musical version of something distinctly Jersey Boys-esque.: Another story of borderline wise-guys triumphing over the ambiguities of a tough ‘hood where women are relegated to walk-ons as ultra-Catholic, slightly hysterical Madonnas or super-sexualized ball-breakers with mouths like sailors.

Oh, how we dismissively underestimated the story-telling mastery of Bronx Tale writer/star Chazz Palminteri. The performance has more in common with the depth and power (if not the plot) of the magnificent I Am My Own Wife than with the fluffy cotton candy of J. Boys. Portraying dozens (we lost count) of characters over the course of 90-riveting minutes, Palminteri weaves a story of violence and love, of bigotry and passion and bitterly divided family loyalties. Directed by Jerry Zaks, A Bronx Tale is also wealthy in humor and provocative, down-to-earth philosophizing. It's simply one of the finest pieces to come out of Broadway In Chicago.

From the intersection of 186th and Belmont (James Noone’s set looks like that particular corner of the Bronx was lifted wholesale from New York City and plunked down on the stage at the Oriental Theatre), Palminteri acts out a partial autobiography that leaves you yearning for a sequel. The story gives us Palminteri from 1960 – 1968, age 9 to 17 - years bookended by two murders, each one witnessed by the boy who would go on to become an Oscar nominee and Hollywood star.

Palminteri’s movie credits include his award-winning turn in Bullets Over Broadway, as well as roles in The Usual Suspects (for our money, one of the top 5 movies ever made) and the 1994 film version of A Bronx Tale directed by and co-starring Robert De Niro. But before he made it in movies, Palminteri was a boy of the Bronx, where as a grade-schooler, he witnessed a local mob boss named Sonny gun down a man in cold blood over a disputed parking space (a scene that will give you pause the next time you try and power-park someone away from that last street spot for miles).

Called on to identify the killer in a police lineup, the youngster was faced with an adult-sized dilemma. He lied, staring straight at Sonny while telling the cops the killer wasn’t among the men paraded before him. As a result, Palminteri’s working-class family was allowed to remain living – in relative peace – in Sonny’s neighborhood.

“I did a good thing daddy, right? I didn’t rat,” the young Chazz (then called Calogero) plaintively asks his straight-arrow, bus driver father.“You did a good thing for a bad man,” his father replies. It’s a response a child can’t be expected to make sense of, and it captures – beautifully – the Gordian moral knot Calogero spends the next decade trying to figure out.

After the line-up, Sonny unofficially adopts Calogero as a combination mascot/son/good luck charm. And as Sonny grows in power to become the most powerful mob leader on the Eastern Seaboard, Calogero, (re-christened “C” by Sonny) became the local golden boy.

Portraying neighborhood fixtures such as Jojo the Whale ( “his shadow crushed a dog,” “you didn’t walk with him. You walked among him.”) and Eddie Mush (“Everything he touched turned to mush. He was cursed.”), Palminteri captures the characters and adventures of a mobbed up neighborhood with the skill of a documentarian.

Watch the scene wherein an outlaw motorcycle gang foolishly disrespects Sonny and the stage virtually fills up horrific violence evocative of a skewed version of “The Wild Bunch.”

Equally powerful are the quieter scenes, such as when C turns to Sonny for advice on dating a black woman – something that in the mid-1960s, didn’t go down well at all with in the insular, racist Italian neighborhood.

A Bronx Tale is also bursting with humor, much of it at the expense of various neighborhood hoods. Never has clueless cave-man misogyny been as hilarious as it is when C’s pal Mario describes an elaborate and outrageous test that supposedly determines whether a woman can be trusted. (It involves a combination of 18-wheelers and blow jobs.)

Or consider young C’s confession to the local priest for lying about murder: “Don't be afraid, my son. No one is more powerful than God,” the priest intones. “I don't know about that, father. Your guy may be bigger than my guy up there, but my guy is bigger than your guy down here,” the little boy wisely replies.

The core of the story is the struggle between Chazz’s father and Sonny for the boy’s heart. Sonny insists “the working man is a sucker,” Chazz's father that the working man is the real tough guy.The contrast between good guys and wise guys is a thousand shades of gray rather simple black and white. Sonny’s father is decent to the bone, except when he’s an ugly racist. Sonny is as attentive and caring a father figure as a boy could ask for – except when he’s out murdering people and accusing C of trying to murder him.

The final third of the tale escalates with frenzied suspense into a blood red anarchy of race riots and assassinations that Palminteri survived by a hair’s breadth. Much to his credit, Palminteri doesn’t wrap everything up with a bow and amoral. Life stories are so much more complicated than that. And in the case of A Bronx Tale, they are also utterly fascinating.