Wasted Talent

source: Wasted Talent

The story of Lilo Brancato is well known to most people. The actors was most famous was his role as Robert Deniro's son in A Bronx Tale. His descent into drug abuse would ruin his career and lead to the death of a NYC police officer. He served over 8 years for Robbery but escaped the more serious charge of murder. His companion was the shooter and while he was a participant in the crime he wasn't charged. This doc directed by a former cop turned film maker and I use that term lightly is terrible. He has no sense of editing ,interviews are way too long. Some of the people you scratch your head trying to figure our what are they doing in this film. Brancato has been trying to restart his career , something I Believe is never going to happen . One of the people interviewed actually states maybe he'll win an academy award one day. Brancato has turned his life around since his release . He attends NA meetings, but he will never be able to live down this crime that led to the death of an off duty police officer. He definitely should have worked with a better group of people to tell his story. The film is amateurish at best. One repeated sequence with Brancato on a couch has some guy off to the right adjusting a camera while sitting on the floor it's all very strange. I'd love to know whet the director was trying to achieve with this. Its worth a look if your interested in the story of Brancato but be warned the film is terrible . Its only redeeming quality is the length which is only 66 minutes. I get a sense in interviews he has given that he doesn't feel responsible for the cops death. Facts are you go to your friends house who always supplied you with drugs. Unknown to you who had died months earlier. You break a window attempting to get in to the apt . The neighbor an off duty cop comes out confronts you both with his gun drawn is shot dead by your buddy and you don't think your responsible .You Certainly Are !!!!!

What a documentary. Deep and gut-wrenching honestly. Filmmaker did a great job showing us his world. Good to see they had featured Lilo's family and people that was around him also. Makes it more of an evened out thorough documentary. A must watch!

I wanted to enjoy this but I couldn't sit through it. I found myself losing interest because of the amateurish and poorly edited scenes.

I'm a fan of documentaries and I've literally watched thousands including random schmo's on Youtube who have compiled them over a weekend and this may very well be the worst directed/written/compiled documentary that I've ever seen. It's an interesting story, which is nearly impossible to fail at, yet this does. Everything feels forced... it feels like an interview rather than a free flow of information being shared to the camera. For reasons that boggle my mind beyond belief, they show a camera perspective showing the interviewed subjects with the cameras and lights on them. The interviews were already feeling high pressured and forced, so why would they intentionally take the viewer even more out of it by showing the production associated with the subject being interviewed? This would almost be like if you're watching a movie and the movie intentionally shows the stuntmen attached to bungee cords and all the props in the middle of the movie. I realize this is a documentary, but it's still the same idea. This isn't what makes this documentary bad... it's already bad, but this sums it up perfectly. It tries to be clever by jumping all over the place, but it ends up being a massive cluster of mostly garbage.There was one portion of the doc that I enjoyed and that's when Lillo was telling his story of how he got the part for A Bronx Tale, which is I'm guessing a good 15 minutes or so. The crazy thing is you could tell that Lillo Brancato is an interesting person who could tell a good story, but this doc feels like they filmed it in a pressure situation rather than letting the interview subjects to speak off the cuff and it shows. The good reviews on here must be from people who were intrigued by the story rather than the documentary in of itself. Hopefully the people who put this doc together could either learn from their mistakes or stop doing documentary's all together, because this is really bad... people on Youtube who compile info over a weekend and make a video compile much better content. Warning not sure if this is a spoiler, this is in reference to the so called burglary, which is public information prior to this documentary, but warning if you don't want to know the story going in even though this barely covers that and does a horrendous job at doing so. Anyways, the situation that landed Lillo beyond bars. His crime was very minimal... misdemeanor-esk at most. His crime was only a so called burglary (but it's a reach to even call what happened a burglary) and in that process a person who he was with, ended up returning fire on an off duty cop and killing him... and since it was a cop, the book gets thrown at Lillo and the person who returned fire. Had it not been a cop, nothing would happened to anyone, but because apparently cops have extra rights then us regular folk, Lilo gets 10 years in prison. Lillo did have self inflicted issues with drugs and had his own personal journey in overcoming those struggles, but did absolutely nothing to land himself in prison in reference to the cop. I can't believe that a situation such as this case can show the special treatment of cops and simply not be ashamed of presenting that so blatantly. Then just the fact that the cop was out of uniform makes all bets off, especially if that person defended themselves by returning fire. Meanwhile Lillo was just in the vicinity when this happened... give me a break!

Just seen this and living in LA I can so relate. Loved the way they did this documentary, raw and powerful. A must watch, I think a lot of people can learn from his story.

I had no idea who Lillo Brancato is but after watching this wow I feel sorry for him. The struggle is real out here and only the strong survive. A real edgy documentary about a man that had it all. I highly recommend this one.

He was so talented. I absolutely loved A Bronx Tale and I had no idea what he had been through after that. Sad situation to be in, great documentary and well edited. 10 stars

I was a big fan of A Bronx Tale and was under the impression this would be a one sided, pro-Lillo Brancato documentary. However, the director did a phenomenal job blending both sides of the story through the eyes of people close to Lillo as well as NYPD who responded to the fatal night. I definitely would recommend this documentary!

It's like the person who made this had never seen a good documentary in their life. Long, boring interviews. Good documentaries are not just talking heads. Couldn't even get halfway through it because it was just so painfully dull.