When a gangster film has running time of three hours or more, audience is likely to expect an epic in the rank of The Godfather or Goodfellas. However, after watching Blood In Blood Out a.k.a. Bound by Honor, 1993 film directed by Taylor Hackford, audience might see that such expectations may not be met.
The plot begins in 1972 when Miklo Velka (played by Damian Chiapa), 17-year old son of white father and Mexican mother, leaves his home and decides to join his Mexican cousins in East Los Angeles – Cruz Candelaria (played by Jesse Borrego) and Paco Aguilar (played by Benjamin Bratt). All three are best friends and members of Vatos Locos street gang, but their paths will diverge. Cruz gets shot and crippled in confrontation with rival gang; he later becomes an artist but constant pain also makes him an drug addict. Miklo and Paco has retaliated by killing rival gang’s leader before getting arrested. Paco takes the offer to join Marines in exchange for lighter sentence and after few years joins Los Angeles Police Department. Miklo, on the other hand, receives long prison sentence that he would serve in San Quentin. There he has trouble to adapt to prison life revolving around racially based gangs – he is too white to be accepted by Mexicans and too Mexican to be accepted by whites. Everything changes when he wins favour of Montana (played by Enrique Castillo), charismatic leader of La Onda, Mexican prison gang. He begins to gain power, trying to play black and white prison gangs against each other. After his release from prison, he would again meet his old street friends, but they are now on the opposite sides of the law.
Blood In Blood Out had misfortune to be released shortly after American Me, film by Edward James Olmos dealing with the same subject. Inevitable comparisons made Taylor Hackford’s film look more conventional and more Hollywood-like. Although script, co-written by poet and former San Quentin convict Jimmy Santiago Bacca, gave film some authenticity (further enhanced by having actual San Quentin prison as shooting location) and although some of the characters were well-written, Blood In Blood Out suffered because of extensive length and too much emphasis on Miklo and his prison misadventures at the expense of Cruz and Paco who, despite being played well by Jesse Borrego and Benjamin Bratt, look like underdeveloped characters. Much of the plot, especially in last two hours, happens in prison where the audience watches complicated Game of Thrones-like intrigues between various prison gangs and their leaders, with plenty of violence that gets repetitive after a while. The ending, which suggest reconciliation between old friends, looks an attempt to give some closure to the story scriptwriters didn’t know how to wrap up properly. Because of that this potentially interesting film turns into disappointment.
RATING: 4/10 (+)
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