Product Description

A biographical film about poet Miguel Pinero who began his writings in prison.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 1-MAR-2005
Media Type: DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #66168 in DVD
• Brand: BRATT,BENJAMIN
• Released on: 2002-07-16
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 94 minutes

Amazon.com
The euphoria of controlled chaos that courses through Benjamin Bratt's portrayal of poet, playwright, and actor Miguel Piñero comes as a welcome surprise. Known primarily as a television actor, Bratt burns his way through what could have easily been an overwrought performance with the surety of a skilled improviser. Piñero begins with the sudden success of the playwright, whose play goes from a prison workshop in Sing Sing to the toast of 1970s New York seemingly overnight, and the requisite fall from grace is expected (Piñero died in 1988 of cirrhosis of the liver). Yet the self-aware cool of Bratt's Piñero--who helps found the still vibrant Nuyorican Poets Café and pens highly successful film and television scripts, all the while ingesting a suicidal dose of alcohol, heroin, and cocaine--lends the film an honesty lacking in most depictions of edgy characters. Highly committed as author, social activist, and con man for the cool, Piñero sums it up with characteristic pith when he tells a television crew, "I have to keep doing bad to keep the writing good." Piñero is at once defiant and defeated, clichéd and transcendent. --Fionn Meade

Customer Reviews

"Puerto Rico...My Heart's Devotion..."
There is a lightbulb moment in Leon Ichaso's "Pinero" in which Miguel Pinero (Benjamin Bratt)in Puerto Rico for a poetry reading, poetry performance really, is scolded by a man in the audience, (and I am paraphrasing here):
Besides the Rum and the Beaches and the weather what do you really know about Puerto Rico and it's problems? You pick and choose what you want from Puerto Rico to fuel your disgusting, angry tirades. You call yourself "NuYorican" as if you are a race of people apart fom those of us who call Puerto Rico our home....
What's ironic is that Pinero goes on an "angry, disgusting" tirade by way of answering the man's pointed questions and concerns; thereby, sustantiating what the man has said. Up to this point, Ichaso has painted a romanticized, subjectively removed portrait of Pinero: his celebrated charisma, his radiant personality, his way with both men and women. But the gentlemen in Puerto Rico snaps us back to the reality of what fueled Pinero's life: his idealization of his childhood Puerto Rico and his subsequent longing for that time in which, he felt life was beautiful and all was well.
Ichaso has chosen to romanticize the trajectory of Pinero's life, through the use of beautifully shot black and white flashbacks and vibrant color "now" scenes. He sets Pinero up as an achetype for all the poor artistic souls who find themselves slaves to their own celebrity as well as to drugs and alcohol. In this sense this film is very similar to "Basquiat" of a few years ago. Both Basquiat and Pinero had very troubled childhoods involving all manner of degradations and problems. Both were extremely talented people who let themselves fall victim to what is now a cliche : the tormented artist who escapes through the use of drugs or liquor or both. Think Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams, Capote, Kerouac, Lautrec or Verlaine to name a very very few. They, like Pinero were full of an artistic fire that inevitably consumed itself, little by little, as it created.
Smack dab in the center of this film is the towering performance of Benjamin Bratt as Pinero and his accomplishment cannot be denied. He's handsome, charming, magnanimous, charitable to a fault, infuriating and pathetic. You wouldn't want him in your life but if he was...you wouldn't want to get rid of him either.
I would think that this is the part of a lifetime for Bratt and he plays it like it's his last.
Talisa Soto is radiant and sexy as Sugar, Pinero's girlfiend and Rita Moreno's indomitable spirit as his mother infuses the entire film with good cheer and pride.
"Pinero" is not a perfect film but it certainly has what very few films have....an all consuming lifeforce that affirms as well as questions our place and function here on earth.

A SAD PORTRAYAL OF MY BROTHERS LIFE
I GIVE THIS FILM TWO STARS, ONE FOR MR.BRATTS PERFORMANCE,THE OTHER FOR THE MS.MORENOS THEY BOTH CAUGHT THE ESSENCE OF MY
MOTHER &BROTHER,THE REST OF THIS FILM [was not very good],ITS FULL FOR UNTRUTHES,IN THE FILMS CREDITS THEY THANK THE PINERO FAMILY
KNOWING FULLY THEY NEVER REQUESTED,OUR INPUT, IT WAS SOLEY
MADE FOR THE PURPOSE OF EXPLOITING HIS MEMORY &LEGACY, I HAVE
A 2HOUR VIDEO OF MIKEY, TALKING ABOUT HIS LIFE MADE 6 MONTHS PRIOR TO HIS DEMISE THAT ,MR.ICHASO NOR ANY AT THE FILM COMP.
WANTED TO SEE. THEY WERE MAKING THEIR VERSION,MIKEY,S LIFE
PS THEIR 10 BROTHERS & SISTER NOT 5,AT LEAST THEY COULD GET THAT RIGHT.
IT ALL BULL,,,,.SUGAR WAS NEVER, THE LOVE HIS,LIFE,ALGARIN
WAS NOT AT HIS DEATHBED,THEY HAD PARTED WAYS YEARS AGO,,
THIS ONLY DOES A A DISERVICE TO HIS MEMORY,LEGACY, HIS FAMILY
THAT ENTIRE,FILM COMPANY & ICHASO SHOULD BE ASHAMED IT ,ITS
GARBAGE, SOON ILL BE RELEASING THE VIDEO ,AND MIKEY WILL HAVE THE LAST WORD, A DISGUSTED BRO...

Style and Promises , Unfulfilled
There is so much to like about this film PINERO that once the movie is over you sit staring at the screen or the TV wondering why you just don't care. The main character Miguel Pinero was a gifted artist and a pungent voice for independent thinking. The portrayal by Benjamin Bratt is first class acting, surely some of the finest work this underrated actor has done. The supporting cast is excellent. The cinematic effects are bewitching to behold. Why doesn't it work? I think part of the problem is the quality of sound, the levels of speaking often buried in noise so that straining to follow the dialogue becomes annoying. The sexual innuendoes in the flashbacks of Pinero's youth are well handled, but then comes the major ommission of Pinero's bisexuality. Yes, few Hollywood actors or writers want to deal with gay issues with doumentary topics. But part of Pinero's magic was his own balancing of his attraction to young teenage men as well as to women. It enriched his poetry, his plays, his presence. Why leave that out of a filmed biography? This could have been an absolutely gripping film that contained the courage of Pinero. But alas, homophobia wins out again.