‘Bound by Honor’--Boyz ‘n the Barrio : Movie review: Taylor Hackford’s would-be epic about three friends and the divergent paths they take is just a long potboiler.

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

Once called “Blood In, Blood Out,” this story of three childhood friends from the barrio and the different paths they take over a dozen years had its name and ad campaign changed after test marketing raised fears it might provoke incendiary reactions. Similar prudence has meant that though the film opens today in San Diego and 29 other cities, its Los Angeles/Orange County debut is at least two weeks away.

The clash between the care that has been taken by director Taylor Hackford to make “Bound by Honor” culturally authentic and its wholehearted embracing of all manner of bogus emotional and dramatic situations is not the film’s only curious aspect. In terms of plot, it shares a multitude of similarities with Edward James Olmos’ 1992 “American Me” and even ends up giving Floyd Mutrux, one of that film’s screenwriters, credit on this script (along with poet Jimmy Santiago Baca and Jeremy Iacone) as well.

But even though both films went so far as gaining unprecedented access to shoot in different California prisons (“American Me” got Folsom, “Bound by Honor” San Quentin) their tones are considerably different. The Olmos film is largely unsentimental and inescapably earnest, a kind of wake-up call to the Latino community, while Hackford’s, for all its fervor, is thoroughly slick and commercial, a potboiler more concerned than not with getting an exploitative rise out of an audience.

Also different are the director’s great hopes for “Bound by Honor,” his desire to turn out a kind of defining saga of Chicano culture. Hackford (who produced “La Bamba” and directed such films as “An Officer and a Gentleman” and “Everybody’s All-American”) has said he had Luchino Visconti’s neo-realistic classic “Rocco and His Brothers” in mind as he worked. A more likely model is Francis Ford Coppola’s “Godfather” trio, but except for inordinate length, there is little resemblance between the two.

“Bound by Honor” 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. As a product of two cultures, called “milkweed” or “the Pillsbury doughboy,” Miklo never feels he quite belongs anywhere, but he has come back to the barrio because that’s as close to home as it gets for him.

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

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But before any of this can happen, a conflict with the rival Tres Puntos 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, the milkweed, ends up having to cope with the nastiness of San Quentin.

Though the film is nominally about all three men over the next dozen years, Paco just about disappears from the screen until the final hour, and Cruz doesn’t fare much better. 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. Brutalized by the Aryan Vanguard and the Black Guerrilla Army, he is increasingly drawn to the almost mystical La Onda organization and its charismatic leader, Montana Segura (Enrique Castillo), known as El Mero Mero.

And it is inside San Quentin that the film’s pulpy sensibility starts to seriously unravel. The overdone parade of leering, cursing, violent prisoners manages to be distasteful without being particularly convincing. And 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.

‘Bound by Honor’

Damian Chapa: Miklo

Jesse Borrego: Cruz

Benjamin Bratt: Paco

Enrique Castillo: Montana

Victor Rivers: Magic Mike

Delroy Lindo: Bonafide

Tom Towles: Red Ryde

Presented in association with Touchwood Pacific Partners I, released by Hollywood Pictures. Director Taylor Hackford. Producers Taylor Hackford, Jerry Gershwin. Executive producers Jimmy Santiago Baca and Stratton Leopold. Screenplay Jimmy Santiago Baco & Jeremy Iacone and Floyd Mutrux. Story Ross Thomas. Cinematographer Gabriel Beristain. Editors Fredric Steinkamp, Karl F. Steinkamp. Costumes Shay Cunliffe. Music Bill Conti. Production design Bruno Rubeo. Art director Marek Dobrowolski. Set decorator Cecilia Rodarte. Running time: 3 hours.

MPAA-rated R (for strong violence and language and for sexuality and drug content).