And the award for most irritating and unworkable movie voice-over goes to …”Aussie Park Boyz”! The voice-over that runs throughout the film including over the end credits sounds like it was recorded by Johnny Five on steroids. The film is the creation of newcomer Nunzio La Bianca who is a nightclub owner in Perth making the venture into feature films.
The story surrounds Camello (Nunzio La Bianca) and his best friend Pepe (Joe Murabito) into Perth’s racially inspired street fighting underbelly. Entering fight after fight, eventually Cam goes too far and accidentally kills a man which sees him and his pal getting thrown in the can. I’m not too sure how to coherently describe the rest aside from the word belligerence!
This appears to be a movie vehicle for writer/director/star Nunzio La Bianca to show off his tough guy fighting skills, revelling in unduly raw street fights and that is it! In that department the film is superbly choreographed, directed and shot with a $500,000 budget. Unfortunately that is where many of the film’s attributes end, making way for an insipidly corny movie experience. The funny thing is that the fight scenes should have been harder to achieve on a miniscule budget than story and decent script. It is quite an anomaly.
As tough as the movie might sound it is really very tame with the exception of a pretty nasty rape scene. The Italian gang in this film dress like Chippendales and all of them lack any stimulating qualities whatsoever. Some of them style themselves inadvertently after a ponytail clad Steven Seagal which further strips this film of any potential significance. The characters are all dull and unimaginative and have a small town mentality. Towards the closing stages it ends up becoming a cheap disjointed rip-off of “The Warriors”.
All of the tough things were achieved on this film, i.e. fight scenes, a huge cast including tons of extras and overall production value including large portions set inside of a big prison. These traits should be of the second most importance following for starters inspired performances and a good script which seem to have been an after thought. The acting is sometimes decent but even at best barely skin deep.
So far “Aussie Park Boyz” has done quite well for itself internationally, as it has been picked up for DVD distribution in a number of territories. I found it a little odd that the film had no credited fight coordinator and especially editor unless the film just strung itself together in a moment of unexplained phenomena. It is a shame that that same mysterious force couldn’t offer up a better voice-over.
In the end what sinks this film is an overabundance of clichéd upon clichéd moments that wore thin back in the late 80s and is only for the most undemanding audience. Watch out for a Vin Diesel look-alike in a bit part which I found sort of amusing.
La Bianca has a major role in an upcoming film of a similar nature opposite veteran Aussie actor John Waters, entitled “The Bouncer” which is helmed by the cinematographer of “Aussie Park Boyz”. It is said that more focus will be placed on the actors and the script. Let’s hope so!
