CAPSULE REVIEW : ‘Bound by Honor’ Fails as an Epic

The following is a synopsis of a review of “Bound by Honor” that was published April 30 when the film was released in 30 cities, including San Diego. The film opens today in Los Angeles.

“Bound by Honor” (citywide) is nothing if not ambitious, but sometimes ambitious is all it is. A sincere attempt at epic filmmaking by director Taylor Hackford, it has been unable to translate its aspirations into believable, non-cliched cinema. What unrolls instead is about three hours of violent, cartoonish posturing incongruously set in the realistically evoked milieu of East Los Angeles.

Once called “Blood In, Blood Out,” the film begins in 1972, with Miklo (Damian Chapa) returning to his Chicano mother in East L.A. after an unsatisfactory encounter with his Anglo father in Las Vegas.

More or less happy to see him are his two best friends and fellow members of the Vatos Locos gang, Paco Aguilar (Benjamin Bratt) and Cruz Candelaria (Jesse Borrego). Paco is a hot-tempered boxer, while Cruz is an aspiring artist.

But a conflict with a rival gang shatters the trio. Paco goes into the Marines, Cruz goes into the hospital and comes out strung out on drugs and angry about the thought of a career spent decorating the living rooms of affluent Anglos. And Miklo ends up having to cope with the nastiness of San Quentin. Although the film is nominally about all three men over the next dozen years, most of “Bound by Honor” (rated R for strong violence and language and for sexuality and drug content) ends up focusing on Miklo’s time inside. And it is inside San Quentin that the film’s pulpy sensibility starts to seriously unravel.

As “Bound by Honor” plods through an interminable laundry list of graphic, bloody confrontations, criminal pursuits and double-crosses both inside and outside the prison, it seems that all it has gained by its extended length is the opportunity to be more than usually convoluted and confusing. Apparently in love with East L.A., this film succeeds only in getting lost in it.