The movie is about that kid, whose father is a bus driver named Lorenzo, and whose hero is a street-corner Mafioso named Sonny. The two men dislike one another, but they both like the kid, and between them he gets some advice that is useful all of his life. De Niro plays Lorenzo, and Palminteri plays Sonny--a smart, violent, lonely man who sometimes sighs, "Just remember this, kid. Nobody really cares."
Palminteri, who is around 40, has been knocking around for years on the fringes of the movies. You may have glimpsed him in some minor roles. He knew "A Bronx Tale" was his shot at the gold ring, and he wasn't going to let anybody take it away from him. He got some big offers from Hollywood studios for the screenplay, but when he said he wanted to play Sonny, the studios shook their heads.
They said the role required an established star. Someone like Robert De Niro.
The afternoon after the movie played in Toronto, De Niro smiled at that irony. "I went to Chazz," he said, "and I told him, they'll promise you you're gonna do it, and eventually somewhere down the line they're gonna come to someone like me. But if you let me direct this screenplay, I'm telling you that you'll play Sonny."
It was a neat irony: The only way to keep De Niro out of the role was to let him direct the picture. Palminteri was in the same position as another unknown Italian-American from New York, Sylvester Stallone, who in 1975 had a screenplay all the studios wanted--but they didn't want Stallone to play Rocky. Palminteri, who was broke but determined, held on, and the result, as it was with "Rocky," is a great performance we might not have gotten from anybody else, even De Niro.
The movie lives and breaths the street life of the Bronx, as young Calogero, nicknamed "C," grows up getting sound advice from his father. "Nothing is worse than a wasted talent," he tells his son. He is a hard-working family man with good values, and orders his son to stay away from Sonny and the other neighborhood mobsters who hang out at the corner saloon. But C is fascinated by them, and drawn to Sonny, who hires him to run numbers and also gives him advice.
In a routine screenplay, this situation would be predictable: The bus driver would give good advice, the mobster would give evil advice, and eventually there would be a violent showdown. But "A Bronx Tale" is not ordinary, and the boy is able to learn from both mentors. One of the things he learns is to be true to his own heart, and when, in high school, he develops a crush on a black girl from a nearby neighborhood, he finds the courage to go out with her despite the racism on both sides of the local dividing line. In scenes so carefully written that every word is important, both Sonny and the father react to the kid's decision, and their advice is about the same: Do what you gotta do, to feel good about yourself.
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