Entertainment Reviews:
Box Office - 12/01/2001
"...PINERO is an impressionist memoir reminiscent of BASQUIAT....In a career-making performance, Benjamin Bratt inhabits the tile role with mesmerizing fury..."
New York Times - 12/13/2001
"...Mr. Bratt's Pinero retains a layer of sinuous craftiness..."
Rolling Stone - 01/17/2002
"...[PINERO] shows off Benjamin Bratt's considerable acting chops..."
Chicago Sun-Times - 01/25/2002
"...[An] intriguing film....Ichaso has created a cinematic vision of Pinero's life that brilliantly captures the passion, energy, tragic weaknesses and overwhelming emotions that clearly flowed from this artist's soul..."
Entertainment Weekly - 07/19/2002
"...Bratt brings electric life to the tortured Pinero..."
Product Description:
Miguel Piņero was a New York City poet and playwright who wrote what he knew: a world of "stabbing, shooting and dying." This gritty, non-linear biographical film presents Piņero's dark charisma and even darker life in all it's angry glory. A junkie, a drug dealer, and a thief, Piņero (played by Benjamin Bratt) spent time in SIng-SIng prison, an experience which was the basis of his most famous play, SHORT EYES, which won the Tony award in 1974. Piņero also pioneered the spoken-word poetry (the forebearer to rap and hip-hop) of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which he helped found.
Mixing digital video in color with 16mm film in black and white, the film creates a convincingly harsh and lively portrait of life on the mean streets of Lower East Side Manhattan in the 1970s and '80s. There were a number of people in Piņero's life who recognized his genius and tried to save him from self-destruction: his mother (Rita Moreno), theater impresario Joseph Papp (Mandy Patinkin), and his longtime girlfriend (Talisa Soto). But the allure of crime and drugs won him over, and Piņero finally crashed and burned, dying young in 1988. This film is a passionate tribute to a passionate artist who remains an important Puerto Rican-American icon.
Description by Buena Vista Home Entertainment:
Piņero
Benjamin Bratt (LAW & ORDER) delivers a masterfully vivid portrayal of the startlingly original Latino icon, poet-playwright-actor Miguel Pinero. After doing hard time in prison for drug-dealing and petty theft, Pinero turned his prison experiences into the Tony Award(R)-winning play "Short Eyes." Then, as a founder of the famed Nuyorican Poets Cafe on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Pinero crafted an influential style of rhythmic urban poetry that is widely recognized as a precursor to rap and hip-hop. Brought to you by executive producer John Leguizamo and featuring Academy Award(R)-winner Rita Moreno (Best Supporting Actress, WEST SIDE STORY, 1961), Giancarlo Esposito (ALI), and Talisa Soto (MORTAL COMBAT 1,2&3) -- critics everywhere were mesmerized by Bratt's graphic performance of this unforgettable bad-boy genius!
