In 1989, Chazz Palminteri came to fame as the author and star of a one-man semi-autobiographical stage show called A Bronx Tale. Four years later, Robert De Niro adapted this production for the movie screen as his feature directorial debut.

Set in the Bronx’s Belmont neigborhood circa 1960, nine-year-old Calogero Anello (Francis Capra) lives with his bus driver father Lorenzo (De Niro) and his mother Rosina (Kathrine Narducci). Calogero idolizes local Mob boss Sonny (Palminteri), much to the chagrin of his dad.

Sonny ignores Calogero until one day when the youngster sees the criminal kill a man in front of the boy’s house and the kid stays mum. While Calogero becomes more and more involved with the underworld, Lorenzo fights a potentially losing battle to keep his son on the straight and narrow.

I assume any readers of this review know of De Niro’s long-standing connection to filmmaker Martin Scorsese. This relationship started with 1973’s Mean Streets and continues through today, as Scorsese and De Niro recently partnered for 2023’s Killers of the Flower Moon.

Tale hit smack-dab between two notable Scorsese/De Niro gangster movies: 1990’s GoodFellas and 1995’s Casino. As such, I feared De Niro’s directorial debut would show too much of his collaborator’s influence.

And at times, Tale can feel like a spinoff of GoodFellas, especially given the way Calogero ignores his family’s desires and pursues affiliation with the gangsters. Of course, GoodFellas didn’t devote a lot of screen time to young Henry Hill, as it gets him to adulthood reasonably quickly, whereas Tale stays with Calogero as a kid.

Though not always a nine-year-old. A little before the film’s halfway point, Tale leaps ahead to 1968 to focus on 17-year-old Calogero (Lillo Brancato) the rest of the way. Obviously this gets him much closer to adulthood, but it avoids the focus on a fully mature lead found in GoodFellas.

That becomes an interesting spin, and it helps avoid the possibility that Tale really will become GoodFellas: The Childhood Years. De Niro also resists the urge to impersonate his longtime director, so he doesn’t emulate Scorsese’s style.

Indeed, De Niro might go a little too far in his apparent desire to differentiate Tale from the Scorsese vibe. While I feel glad that Tale doesn’t turn into cut-rate Marty, the movie can seem a bit too subdued and free from flash.

I probably should appreciate that De Niro goes down this path. Plenty of first-time directors would attempt to dazzle viewers with a slew of showy cinematic techniques, so I like the fact that De Niro avoids these pitfalls.

Still, I think De Niro might try too hard to avoid comparisons to Scorsese. That leads Tale to often feel less dramatic and fluid than it should.

Though at least De Niro and screenwriter Palminteri expand the action well. A lot of movies based on stage productions would keep matters extremely restricted and the origins of Tale as a one-man show made that possibility even more likely.

Tale broadens its horizons in a satisfying manner. Of course, it usually stays pretty close to Calogero’s Bronx neighborhood, but at least it doesn’t feel stuck in one place.

Still, I can’t find a lot about Tale to make it an especially compelling journey, mainly because it keeps its characters oddly dull. At the core, Calogero simply never becomes a compelling protagonist.

Actually, the pre-adolescent Calogero manages some charming moments, but the teen version seems bland and without personality. It feels tough to swallow that the character depicts the engaging Palminteri because Calogero fails to show any charisma or give the audience a reason to invest in his journey.

And Calogero simply doesn’t go down a particularly dynamic path. With his involvement with the criminal element as well as his attempts to date a Black girl named Jane Williams (Taral Hicks) in a racially fraught environment, the narrative comes with plenty of room for drama.

Unfortunately, none of these elements create real spark. The movie mostly meanders without a lot of intrigue, and the angel/devil battle between Lorenzo and Sonny doesn’t bring much punch either.

Maybe Tale needed a more experienced director to evoke its inherent drama. Maybe De Niro tried too hard to avoid overly showy techniques with his first stab behind the camera.

Whatever the case, Tale feels more like a movie I respect in theory than that I enjoy. Though the film comes with potential, it tends to seem strangely flat.

A Bronx Tale appears in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 on this 4K UHD Disc. This Dolby Vision presentation generally looked good.

Despite a light layer of grain, I couldn’t help but suspect that the image came with some noise reduction. A few too many shots featured faces that felt a bit “plastic”.

Nonetheless, the film generated largely positive delineation. A little softness crept in along with the moderate smoothing impression, but most of the flick seemed fairly accurate.

No issues with jagged edges or moiré effects materialized, and I saw no edge haloes. Print flaws also didn’t interfere.

Colors tended toward a subdued palette with a modest lean toward blues and greens. The hues appeared appropriate for the project, and HDR gave the tones a boost.

Blacks seemed deep and tight, while shadows came across as smooth. Whites and contrast enjoyed a moderate shot in the arm as well. Despite a few concerns, I thought this became a more than watchable image.

Don’t expect much from the film’s subdued DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack as it lacked ambition. This meant a pretty heavy emphasis on the front channels.

Music showed nice stereo presence, and these elements also spread to the rear channels in a minor manner. Effects didn’t spread out in an especially involving way, however.

Honestly, a lot of the track felt almost monaural in that realm. Some vehicles moved across the forward domain in a passable manner but they failed to give us much.

As for the rear speakers, they remained awfully passive. Again, little music popped up back there, but effects didn’t – at least not to a noticeable degree – so this became an awfully restrained soundscape for 1993.

At least audio quality seemed fine, as speech remained natural and concise. Effects occasionally betrayed a little distortion and they didn’t show great dimensionality, but they came across as reasonably accurate.

Music mixed score and period songs, so obviously the latter depended on the nature of the source. Music came across with decent fidelity, though I didn’t sense great range. This felt like a surprisingly low-key and restricted mix for a movie from 1993.

Under Revisiting A Bronx Tale, we find two new interviews. We hear from actor/director Robert De Niro (14:31) and actor/writer Chazz Palminteri (45:50).

During his chat, De Niro discusses how he came to the property and how he convinced Palminteri to give him the rights, casting, sets and locations, music, influences, attempts at authenticity, balancing acting and directing.

As for Palminteri, he tells us about the movie's autobiographical elements, how he ended up as a writer/performer and his original one-man show, its adaptation for the screen, other aspects of his life, casting, and the project's continued legacy.

I don't tend to expect much from De Niro interviews, as he usually can offer a dull subject. However, he manages to fill his relatively short piece with useful information.

Unsurprisingly, Palminteri's reel works better, as he gives us a fine array of insights, especially related to connections to his life. Both interviews work and add to our understanding of the film.

In addition to the film’s trailer, we find a circa 1993 Making Of Featurette. It spans six minutes, 43 seconds and offers info from De Niro, Palminteri, producer Jane Rosenthal and actors Lillo Brancato and Francis Capra.

They cover some basics of the project and not much more in this promo piece. I do like the short glimpse of Brancato’s audition tape in which he impersonates De Niro, though.

In 1993, Robert De Niro went behind the camera for the first of his two directorial efforts via A Bronx Tale. Though superior to the sluggish and dull Good Shepherd from 2006, Tale nonetheless fails to sufficiently explore the drama at its core. The 4K UHD comes with reasonably good though unexceptional picture and audio as well as a mix of interviews. While it shows potential, Tale just doesn’t quite click.