Back in the Day Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		0.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		1.5

Back in the Day Blu-ray Movie Review

Knock-Off Cinema

Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 28, 2016

Back in the Day was scripted, produced by and stars Brooklyn native William DeMeo, whose IMDb bio advises that he has spent the last decade as an "entertainment industry professional", a phrase that echoes such inflated titles as"custodial engineer" or "relationship management expert". DeMeo does have legitimate credits, of which the most prominent to date is several seasons on The Sopranos, where he played a member of Paulie Walnuts' crew. As an authentic face in the ensemble of that groundbreaking mob series, DeMeo fit in admirably. As the would-be auteur of this flavorless blend of boxing picture and mob drama, he is punching above his weight. Still, the scale of DeMeo's ambition is something to behold. If a good movie could be willed into existence by the sheer force of boundless self-confidence, DeMeo's vanity project might rival Ben-Hur.

A cross between Rocky and A Bronx Tale, DeMeo's film is the story of a boxer, Anthony Rodriguez (DeMeo), a Brooklyn boy who grows up in the Italian neighborhood of his mother (Annabella Sciorra) and suffers discrimination because of his Puerto Rican father (Manny Perez), who is also an abusive alcoholic. When the teenage Anthony beats up a local pedophile, his natural boxing talent is spotted by the local mob boss, Enzo (Michael Madsen), who sends the boy to train with a retired boxer, Eddie Travor (Danny Glover). After Anthony wins his first major bout, he is taken under the wing of Enzo's over-boss, Gino Fratelli (Alec Baldwin). Following years of training and fights, an occasional misstep and a relocation from Brooklyn to Westchester, Anthony wins the middleweight championship.

Unlike a classic boxing picture, however, Back in the Day doesn't build to Anthony's triumphant victory. In a curious choice that robs the film of any suspense, DeMeo and his director (former actor Paul Borghese) choose to open the film with Anthony's title bout, after which the newly crowned champ tells his life story to a sports reporter (HBO's Larry Merchant, playing himself). With the outcome already known, the film wanders episodically through the rest of its two-hour running time. Even the romantic tribulations suffered by Anthony during years of pining for Mary (Shannen Doherty), his neighbor from childhood, fail to generate tension, because the film discloses at the outset that Mary and Anthony will not end up together. There's no Adrian in this Rocky's corner, just a pair of tattooed groupies lounging in the champ's bed.

Back in the Day shortchanges all the standard elements of a boxing tale, including the relationship between Anthony and his trainer. Having cast Danny Glover for his recognizable face, the filmmakers waste him by reducing his role to that of generic encouragement ("Go out there and get him!"). The script is so lazy that it doesn't even bother to show their first meeting. In the most extended of the training sequences, Glover's trainer vanishes entirely, the better to concentrate on the film's star. The boxing matches are mostly shown in snippets, as if DeMeo and his director were in a hurry to get them out of the way. In a bid for shorthand authenticity, the filmmakers add an awkward cameo by boxer Mike Tyson as himself.

Back in the Day's story line offers a variation on A Bronx Tale, in which a neighborhood kid is befriended by a mob boss and gets an uncomfortably close look at both the allure and the peril of living outside the law. But here too, DeMeo's script saps the story of any real conflict, because his Anthony isn't an ordinary boy coming of age but a superstar in the making. Gangster life never holds any allure for him, because he's sure from the outset that he's destined for greater things. The local wise guys help Anthony realize his dream but never ask for any quid pro quo in the form of thrown fights or side work as an enforcer—a forbearance that makes these mafiosi unique in the annals of crime, both real and cinematic. Even more peculiar is the portrayal of the mob itself. Despite being a Sopranos alumnus, DeMeo seems not to have noticed that show's central concept of the 21st Century Mafia as a fraying organization fallen on hard times. The gangsters in Back in the Day strut and posture like they're still in their Goodfellas heyday, as if the organized crime prosecutions of the Eighties and Nineties hadn't happened. (Their only concession to modernity is the occasional reference to an iPhone or Facebook.) The organization's illegal businesses also remain conveniently vague. With a notable exception involving a gangland rivalry, DeMeo's mobsters only kill people who cause trouble in the neighborhood. In his version of Brooklyn, organized crime becomes a public service.

Anthony's boyhood friend, Matty, gets him into more trouble than any of the criminals with whom the pair associate. A habitual gambler, Matty loses his car to a "made man" named Dominick (Ronnie Marmo), runs his pizza joint into the ground because of debts and keeps endangering his buddy's promising boxing career by enticing him into brawls that get them arrested. In a bizarre casting choice, Matty is played by Joseph D'Onofrio, who was the young version of Joe Pesci in Goodfellas, which makes his presence a constant reminder of what a real gangster film looks like. Equally jarring is the appearance of actor Lillo Brancato, recently paroled from a ten-year prison term for armed robbery, as the loud-mouthed brother of one of Anthony's opponents. Before turning to crime for real, Brancato was plucked from obscurity to star in A Bronx Tale as Calogero, the ordinary kid torn between his honest, hardworking father and a charismatic mobster. Far more than DeMeo's Anthony, Brancato embodies the perils and possibilities of growing up in a tough neighborhood "back in the day".

Back in the Day Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Back in the Day was shot on Red by George Mitas, who has photographed such New York-based indies as Lie Down with Dogs and This Thing of Ours. The production may have used real locations, but it routinely looks fake. Nothing in the lighting, set decoration or costume design conveys the sense of a lived-in neighborhood, but Virgil Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray can't be faulted for the film's visual banality, which appears to be inherent to the source. The disc presents a competent but unremarkable image, with good black levels, sharpness and detail. Where Virgil can be faulted is in cramming a two-hour film onto a BD-25, resulting in an average bitrate of 17.98 Mbps. Even with digital capture, the compression is too tight, and artifacts appear intermittently in the form of mosquito noise. Specialty labels seem particularly prone to this kind of corner-cutting, saving pennies per unit by opting for a single-layered disc.

Back in the Day Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Back in the Day features a functional 5.1 sound mix encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA. Surround activity is limited to environmental ambiance, and the dynamic range is curiously compressed. Gunshots are noticeably anemic, and even the blows exchanged in the boxing ring do not register with any authority. The generic score is credited to Randy Edelman (The Mask) and Andrew Markus (Mob Wives).

Back in the Day Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The disc contains no extras.

Back in the Day Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Despite the presence of Baldwin, Glover, Madsen and Sciorra, all of whom deserve better, Back in the Day has nothing to recommend it. Virgil's Blu-ray presentation is presentable at best. Skip it.