“Empire” is a fiasco for the record books, one that desperately tries to carve heroes out of thugs, gangsters, and deviants, and fails horribly. The movie, noticeably, takes much of its formula from better gangster flicks, including “Scarface” and rips apart the movies, taking each element, pasting it together in this. The entire narrative and pitiful attempts at character development are annoying, slow and so predictable it’s disgusting. Franc. Reyes directs this like a film student, never contributing anything new or different to talk about.
John Leguizamo plays Victor Rosa, a neighborhood drug dealer and crime boss who watches over his territory like a dictator yet always helps his people out. One day after putting a hit on a rival crime boss (Rapper Fat Joe), he experiences a tragedy that will forever change him. Forced to confront his own life, he decides to leave the business behind and go legit with the help of Wall Street businessman Jack (Peter Sarsgaard) who will help him finance stocks and soon Victor will learn to trust again. The plot has been done to death and nothing in this really surprised me. Many of the actors in here over act of under act their roles, giving us these caricatures of gangsters and thugs that intend to be intimidating and are just annoying.
Denise Richards hams it up big time, often screaming at a comedic tone in moments of drama never pulling off her dialogue. We also have a small and painfully dumb role from Isabella Rosellini, who plays the big cheese of the mobs “La Colombiana”. She tries desperately to make her character work but looks like she went to a “The Godfather” garage sale. We also have terrible performances from rapper Fat Joe who tries hard to come off as a threatening character, but all the time I was asking if he was ever going to stand up and run around. Certain scenes in the movie, though intended to be dramatic, come off as pathetic and I found myself laughing aloud in scenes intended to be dramatic. Been there, done that. “Empire” is a badly made gangster drama that does nothing for the sub-genre, and is just a god awful violent fantasy that glorifies the lifestyle.