American Me

Directed by: Edward James Olmos

RS: Not Rated

1992 Drama

Making a vigorous film directing debut, actor Edward James Olmos -- an Oscar nominee for "Stand and Deliver" and an Emmy winner for "Miami Vice" -- joins the ranks of filmmakers determined to expose the forces eating away at society. The subject of Floyd Mutrux and Desmond Nakano's ambitious screenplay is the escalating street crime in the East Los Angeles barrio where Olmos grew up. Beginning with the zoot-suit riots in 1943 and ending in the mid-Seventies, "American Me" uses three generations of a Hispanic-American family to illustrate how the disease of gang violence moves from the street to prison and back again in a cycle that turns kids into addicts, pushers and killers.

Olmos plays Santana, a hood sent behind bars as a boy; he rules the streets from his cell, along with his pals Mundo (Pepe Serna) and J.D. (William Forsythe). Released from Folsom (the prison scenes were shot there), Santana tries to reform, especially when he meets Julie (Evelina Fernandez), a single mother who responds to his gentle side. But old patterns persist. In bed, he enters Julie from behind in a brutal imitation of the only sex he's known -- the gang rapes of prison.

Olmos is unsparing in depicting the dark side of human behavior. His in-your-face style stresses the urgency of a situation most of us choose to ignore. Though powerful, the film is sometimes preachy; there's a sense that information is being disseminated instead of dramatized. But it's hard to believe anyone will remain unmoved by "American Me" or its final shattering image of human desolation.

PETER TRAVERS
RS 627