‘Mi America’ an epic crime drama with too many elements

Similar in tone to “A Most Violent Year” but lacking that recent film’s unwavering focus, “Mi America” is a well-intentioned but drawn-out crime drama.

When the disappearance of five Mexican migrant workers in an upstate New York blue-collar town quickly turns into a hate crime, a Latino detective (the film’s writer-director, Robert Fontaine Jr.) finds himself immersed in a murder investigation that forces him to assess his own identity as he revisits violent and racially charged elements of his youth.

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With its many interconnected subplots and large cast, the film has an awful lot on its plate, the sort of epic serving best rendered by more skillful filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese and the late Robert Altman, who made sprawling ensemble pieces look like intimate dinner parties.

Although Fontaine, a former soap opera actor, hits the saga’s sins-of-the-fathers theme too often, there’s a palpable small-town-in-transition feel to the fictional Braxton (played by Newburgh, N.Y.), with its timeless coffee shops and crumbling warehouses, that makes for an intriguing setting.

And there’s no denying Fontaine’s reflective but rumpled Rolando Ramirez is an interesting protagonist — one that could find a suitable home in a one-hour prime-time landscape, but is too frequently bumped to the sidelines in this overlong feature film.

“Mi America.”

MPAA rating: R for language throughout and some violence.

Running time: 2 hours, 6 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle’s Music Hall, Beverly Hills.

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