Memorable, crazy movie

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Over the past few years, anything that featured Edward James Olmos left be with a bit of mixed feelings about the individual. There's no doubt that he's a very talented performer, but it's his film choices that gets my goat. But when seeing the movie "American Me" knowing that he not only starred, but directed the movie, I actually was starting to take him in considerably. Knowing that such a talented performer being held back by poor decisions, we surely won't find him being wasted by his own movie.Based on the life of Mexican mob kingpin Rodolfo Cadena (founder of La Eme), it shouldn't come as a surprise that there will some dramatization being that it's a biopic and not a documentary. This movie follows his hard-fought life, this movie is as simple as it gets, the story of how La Eme started. Montoya Santana (who was in his younger days played Panchito Gomez, later played by Olmos), is a Chicano youth growing up in Los Angeles' Barrio section forms a posse with Mundo (Richard Coca later Pepe Serna) and JD Morgan (Steve Wilcox/ William Forsythe) and dubbed the group under the moniker La Primera. One day, they took a detour through a rival gang's hangout spot, they break into a diner. The owner, who live nearby to them, catches them and sends them to juvenile hall and JD gets a prosthetic leg. This further explains why Roldolfo befriends a Caucasian guy who speaks with a Latino accent and is part of their circle. These events lead up to the gang going to jail and the formation of La Eme comes into fruition.The film stands out as a personal pet project for Olmos as he informs his audience about the dangers of joining a gang. He speaks truly of this cause from experience being born in the Barrios himself. And even casted real prisoners from Folsom Prison as extras to prove his points.His choices of what he brings into his movie is quite interesting and very fascinating. Such examples including the opening settings of his interpretation of the 1940's Zoot Suit Riots and it features a city war between vicious seamen in the California area as they attack Latinos predominately clad in Zoot Suits who represented Latino pride which lead to friction between Mexican-Americans and Caucasian-Americans which was what spawned gangster life among Latinos in the California area.The soundtrack was quite impressive too featuring an eclectic array of classic songs from the 1950, 1960's and the 1970's including Ike and Tina Turner's version of Sly and the Family Stone's "I Want to Take you Higher" and Latino group Los Lobos doing Junior Walker's "Shotgun" amongst others. The film is generally one big flashback focusing on Santana's story from his childhood to his prison sentence and his narration is crisp and very well detailed."American Me" will not bite you to get attention, nor will it annoy you in any way. But what it does is it'll tell a wonderful story. And even you root for Santana all the way, he's in no way by any means an inspiring hero we can idolize with. Even when he tries to become a better more likable individual, we can't ignore the fact that he is a thug and a brute who gets what he deserves. The movie can be pretty ugly at times. Not Scorsese ugly, but violent enough to keep our attention going. It's a bit gooey with the rape scenes, but it still contributes in keeping with the flow of the story. Overall it's an authentic and captivating film that has a steady flow about a subject never really mentioned in movies.

"American Me" is arguably the most significant film not discussed in the same breath with crime epics such as "The Godfather." It was clearly made, both consciously and perhaps subconsciously to be the Mexican Godfather film and that is hardly a bad thing. Its honesty regarding the emotional costs of violence and murder are on par with that film. I don't know what to say to anyone who critiques Edward James Olmos. First, this actor's capacity to convey a complicated range of emotions without words is absolutely staggering and has been seen to great effect in many great films including "Blade Runner." Additionally, he is inarguably the premiere Latino / Chicano filmmaker and actor of all time. If you look at the films he has been involved with, think about how they have dominated the way Hispanic people, Mexicans in particular, have been seen by others who would, largely, not even know of the experiences of their neighbors. "American Me" is so unflinching that, after seeing it, I had to see it again to believe it was actually made by or released by a major studio. Once upon a time studio films featured honest portraits of life but rarely any more. "American Me" tho hardly the knee-slapping comedy some reviewer wanted or expected, conveys an honest sense of the life lived by many without the hope of education or prosperity but with the same need for respect and something bigger than themselves to believe in that you or anyone else has and lives their life by. If you want to see a life perhaps very different than yours depicted with uncommon honesty, watch this film.

I am a fan of both drug and prison movies so when I was recommended this movie I had some pretty high expectations. I read a lot of reviews on here and it seemed that people felt this was an accurate portrayal of prison life. I have never been to prison but I highly doubt that many of the events that happened in the movie could occur in prison. The one specific scene that I am talking about is the near riot. The other problem I had with this movie was the overuse of Latino terms. I understand that these terms are used in real life but every other word was "essay"(sp) or "homes". This wouldn't have been such an issue if the movie at least had some action between long drawn out conversations. The action was few and far between and I found myself dozing off many times. The thing that bothered me with this movie was the lack of a score. There was little to no background music to set the tone of a scene. This left the movie with a ton of awkward silences with the actors standing just making a silly facial expression for minutes at a time. So if you are looking for an action filled drug movie I'd look elsewhere but if you are looking for a way to waste 2 hours of your day I'd recommend "American Me".

I saw this movie a couple of days ago. It was a chilling and shocking tale of a society that I frequently visited in my life. I treaded on the turf of East Los Angeles practically everyday for three years. The Zoot Suit riots, the drug circulation, the violence is all real. Hot summer days, cold winter nights. They had an Asian population over there whom I met on a phone-based chat service. The movie American Me was to me violence Mexican Mafia style. The Italian movies differ, while their scenes are more dramatical. I believe that the action in American Me was in a sense, more raw. I could actually say that a Mexican is three races combined. Spanish, French, and Italian.