MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Amongst Friends’: A Jewish Version of ‘Mean Streets’

The young toughs in “Amongst Friends” (selected theaters) are a new breed in the movies who act like the old breed. They come on like junior-league Mafiosi but they’re actually the scions of wealthy Jewish Long Island suburbanites.

Unlike most of their friends who have gone on to college after high school, Andy (Steve Parlavecchio), Billy (Joseph Lindsay) and Trevor (Patrick McGaw) have taken up the life of the small-time hustle with big-time aspirations.

Rob Weiss, the 26-year-old writer-director making his feature film debut, has a strong affinity for this milieu but, at the same time, he doesn’t really make it believable. There’s high comedy in the image of affluent Jewish kids swaggering and prancing like inner-city toughs; they don’t respect their parents, who gave them everything, but they revere their grandparents, who scrounged and cheated to give their children everything. It’s a great Generation X story but Weiss chooses to play it out as a crime melodrama. The characters never emerge from their welter of grudges and double-crosses.

Weiss, like most independent filmmakers of his generation, has been deeply influenced by the films of Martin Scorsese, specifically “Mean Streets.” There are far worse models for a new director than “Mean Streets,” but Weiss misunderstands the nature of that film. It wasn’t about punk gangsterism; it was about character, and Catholicism and guilt and self-immolation.

The Jewish background of the kids in “Amongst Friends” is barely visible; we don’t see the tradition they came out of, even in rebellion. Most of the movie seems to be taken up with Andy, Trevor, Billy and their cronies and enemies trying to out-tough guy one another. Their jags are sometimes funny but they go on too long and they make the same point--that these boys are looking for a way to feel big.

Andy, who is the most level-headed of the trio, also comes across as the least stereotyped. When a botched robbery places him under the control of an old gangster buddy (David Stepkin) of his late grandfather’s, he comes alive. He feels as if he’s acting out his grandfather’s rags-to-riches success story (minus the rags, of course.) Trevor, who spent two years in prison for a bungled drug drop, is the film’s moody loner who still pines for his high school sweetheart (Mira Sorvino). He acts tough but inside he’s hurting--oy, is he hurting.

Weiss keeps his actors in high energy, and a few set pieces, like the recurring Tweedledee/Tweedledum act of two warm-up-suited drug dealers (Frank Medrano and Louis Lombardi), are ticklish. But “Amongst Friends” (rated R for violence, drug use, sexuality and pervasive strong language) reminds you of so many other movies that finally it’s unmemorable.

‘Amongst Friends’

Steve Parlavecchio: Andy

Joseph Lindsay: Billy

Patrick McGaw: Trevor

Mira Sorvino: Laura

A Fine Line Features release. Director Rob Weiss. Producer Matt Blumberg. Executive producer Rob Weiss. Screenplay by Rob Weiss. Cinematographer Michael Bonvillain. Editor Leo Trombetta. Music Mick Jones. Production design Terrence Foster. Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (violence, drug use, sexuality, pervasive strong language).