Right from the get-go, this thing is off the chain! Paul Sorvino and Tony Lo Bianco play two "bruddas from Noo Yawk" who work in construction and are getting drunk. Richard Gere, who actually seems like a real person and not a caricature of a New York Italian, gives the best performance.So much swearing for a movie that I taped off of Turner Classic Movies in the wee hours of the morning! Nothing against swearing but I can't believe I taped it off of Turner Classic Movies! There's a hilariously over the top scene with Tony Lo Bianco's wife and their younger son...I just sat there with my mouth open. My hat's off to the actors but maybe the director should have reigned them all in a little, it comes off a little too hysterical...or maybe that's just how it is in Italian households? That's just my opinion but check it out for yourself. If nothing else, you'll laugh inappropriately like I did.I was entertained throughout though, every scene is special in that it could be it's own short film. I felt like they were adapting the book chapter by chapter. If you like this time period and the movies from then, you will want to see it.

Robert Mulligan is a director who can sometimes serve up a masterpiece and sometimes a megabomb. Take To Kill A Mockingbird, for example, an undisputed classic which would appear on most top 100 lists. Then compare it to The Stalking Moon, a 1968 western which is as boring as it is heavy-handed. In Bloodbrothers, Mulligan has managed to be inconsistent within one movie - aspects of his family drama are pretty good, other parts are downright dull.Young New Yorker Stony De Coco (Richard Gere) is approaching his 20s and is at the junction of life where he must decide where his future lies. His aggressive, misogynistic father Tommy (Tony LoBianco) expects him to follow in the family tradition of becoming an electrician on construction sites, but Stony feels he has a better aptitude for working with children. He gets a job looking after kids at a city hospital, and finds plenty of rewards in the job, but Tommy applies increasing pressure on him to look for a more "macho", manly job.Stony's dilemma is quite interesting, and the role is played pretty well by a young, impressive Gere. Tommy is also a strongly-written character, memorably fleshed-out by the reliable and ever-underrated LoBianco. In fact, on the performance front the film is somewhat impressive all the way down the cast. The faults in Bloodbrothers lie elsewhere. Walter Newman's script (arguably the least worthy screenplay ever to receive an Oscar nomination) makes too many unforgivable changes to its source novel; the pacing is less than ideal (the film is halfway through before it becomes apparent where the story is really going); and the broader social and personal issues in the story are never satisfactorily developed. As an acting showcase, this is good stuff but as an overall film it's not so good. There's certainly no reason why you shouldn't give it a go, but it's doubtful that this will ever be a film you want to watch over and over again.

******SPOILERS****** Hard hitting yet sensitive story about a blue collar family living in a working class neighborhood in the Bronx NY and the ups and downs that they go through in the movie. The movie has to do with an Italian/American family, the De Coco's. The De Coco's have a son that's torn between being a construction worker and working as a recreational assistant at a local hospital. In hospital Stony want's to work with and help young children who have severe emotional problems like his little brother Albert, Michael Hershewe. Powerhouse performances by Tony Lo Bianco, Tommy De Coco, Paul Sorvino, Chubby De Coco and a very young and electrifying Richard Gere as Stony De Coco in one of his first major movie roles that showed the great talent that he had long before he became a top Hollywood super-star. Stony at first trying to live and work like his father Tommy and uncle Chubby wanted him to he then begins to slowly lose his interest. Being the sensitive type Stony finds it hard to live up to his father Tommy macho image and how that mindset effects his little brother Albert who's suffering from emotional problems due to having sever eating disorders.There's also Tommy's womanizing that leads his wife Marie, Lelia Goldoni, to try to have an affair with that weirdo Jackie, Raymond Singer, who lives in her apartment building who always had eyes for her. When Tommy finds out about this supposed affair ,from a phone call from Jackie's mother, he goes haywire and almost kills Marie and ends up himself in the hospital with what seemed like an emotional breakdown. Stony seeing what this type of lifestyle was doing to his parents leaves his job as a construction worker, that his father Tommy broke his back to get him, and decides to leave with his younger brother Albert for good. Stony in an attempt to say goodbye has an emotionally packed confrontation with his father, Tommy, and uncle, Chubby, that was the best of so many great scenes in the movie.Simple yet powerful movies about people that Hollywood doesn't make too many movies about these days. Another great scene in "Bloodbrothers" was a talk between Chubby and his friend and bar owner Banion, Kenneth McMillan, on how he threw his son Paulie, Bruce French, out of the house when he found out that he was gay. Chubby tried to get both father and son back together later by going to Buccellati jewelry on Fifth Avenue where Paulie worked to get him to attend his fathers birthday party. Chubby loses it when Paulie not only refused to show up at the party but didn't even want to sign a birthday card for his father that Chubby gave him. You could see the two different worlds that both Chubby and Paulie lived in and how they just couldn't come to any common ground on just a simple matter like that. And there was also a moving story by Chubby that he told Banion in regard to his son Paulie, that Banion felt he lost because of his gay lifestyle, about his own son ,the son that Chubby lost who tragically died in infancy. Almost in tears Chubby tells how he loved and looked after his nephew Stony as that son who he lost and never lived to see grow up. Also very good in the movie are Stony's two girlfriends Cherie and Annette, Kristine De Bell & Marilu Henner, who more then anything exemplified the two worlds that Stony was torn between."Bloodbrothers" is a forgotten movie until you see it and realize that it was one of the most underrated motion pictures of the 1970's. A touching moving and tragic film with a great and stirring musical score that shows that there is nothing uninteresting about working people when it's a movie about working people as good as "Bloodbrothers".

When I was a teen, I saw BLOODBROTHERS as a double feature with a horror movie (don't ask me which one). I thought the movie was overwrought then but I sorta enjoyed the fact that the film was dealing with ordinary folks. I've seen the movie recently and whoa, what a terrible melodrama. Except for Gere and Tony Lo Bianco, the film is almost unwatchable. It's badly shot. Looks really cheap. And the level of melodrama in the script and direction is, well, actually revolting. What were they thinking? Every scene with the mother and the kid. Every scene with the wife cheating and Lo Bianco finding out. All the hospital scenes. They all scream melodrama. BLOODBROTHERS is not a very subtle movie. It hammers every emotions and blue-collar story-lines with the light touch of a sledgehammer.The only reason to watch BLOODBROTHERS is for Tony Lo Bianco, an underrated actor if there ever was one, and a star-making performance by a then young Richard Gere. Whenever Gere is on screen, he eclipses everything else. He really stands-out from the grubby looking project. If you need to see where Gere started out, you have to watch this but if you're looking for a good story about ordinary folks, avoid this movie at all cost.