Critic's Grade: D

Movies don't get more blatantly useless than "Deuces Wild," a film that seems to have been crafted out of its director's fetish for slow-motion photography and useless, unneeded violence and carnage. Not only that, but the story is a tired ripoff of street gang movies like "The Warriors" borrowing elements from previous works without shame, and without good reason. The acting ranges from fair to fetid, the production values slick but unsuccessful in grabbing one's attention, and the overall experience painfully akin to being hit in the head with a baseball bat.

Set in Brooklyn in the 1950's, the story takes us into the lives of the Deuces, a street gang who have taken a vow to keep drugs off of their block no matter what the cost. At the head of this gang is Leon (Stephen Dorff), whose dead junkie brother incited the no-drugs policy, and whose brother, Bobby (Brad Renfro), is also a member of the gang. But whereas Leon would rather see things come to a peaceful standstill, Bobby is quick to raise hell amongst the Vipers, a rivaling gang that makes repeated attempts to brings drugs to the street.

So, as you would know, Marco (Norman Reedus), the man Leon holds responsible for the death of his brother, is released from prison after three years; he makes his way back to Brooklyn intent on taking out his nemesis one way or another. Then there's the character played by Matt Dillon, a shady figure secretly working with Marco while keeping up a pretense with Leon that he wants no more violence.

And then there's the most contrived and cliched subplot of all, that which involves Bobby's involvement with Annie (Fairuza Balk), the sister of a Viper gang member. That is so "West Side Story," only without the feeling or heart of that piece, which are replaced with Annie's complaints that Bobby will not show her attention or affection when in public. Please! We've seen them onscreen together for a total of possibly five minutes before she begins whining about this.

As a story, "Deuces Wild" hits all the spots it should. There are the sequences in which we see the lives of the characters singled out for our attention: we meet people like Leon's love interest, he and Bobby's alcoholic mother, Annie's looney toon mother who twirls around singing Christmas songs and waits for Santa Claus, and a preteen scuzball played by young Freddie Muntz. These characters waltz onto the screen and leave just as abruptly, never taking on any purpose other than to provide us with some sort of image that the gang members have a life outside of walking with bravado and beating one another to death with fists and bats.

The fights themselves are handled in ways that have to be seen to be believed, and no, that's not a good thing. Director Scott Kalvert throws in so many slow-motion captures and quick cuts that his style becomes muddled and disjointed. There is no intensity to any of this: where there should be a sense of urgency and danger lurking in the shadows, there is nothing but the sighs of the audience members wondering when this torture session will end. This gives birth to such disturbing scenes as an elderly man being pulled from his car in a sequence in which the Vipers decimate Deuce territory, and the every-hammy, slapstick climax that is fingernails-on-a-chalkboard painful to watch.

About the only bright spots in the film are Dorff and Balk, who show honest attempts to bring us into their characters, even though they are paper-thin from the start. Renfro gets stuck playing the hothead, his accent slipping in and out, and the rest of the supporting cast either has a hammy New York tongue or no lines at all. The production values are expensive-looking, with sets and props that appear authentic from the period; it's only a shame that they weren't given to a better-developed project. "Deuces Wild" is just a big fat cliche, a scatterbrain gang flick that flaunts things like machismo, bravado, everything but a credible story and likeable characters.

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