BACKSTREET DREAMS is about a New Jersey street hood, Dean (Jason O'Malley), and his great love and devotion to his autistic son Shane (played by twins Joseph and John Viezzi). The film begins with Dean coming home from another hard day of intimidation and violence. It becomes
increasingly obvious that he and his wife Lucy (Sherilyn Fenn of TV's "Twin Peaks") are unable to reach their extremely introverted child. Enter NYU Ph.D. candidate Stephanie Bloom (Brooke Shields), who is bound and determined to get through to Shane. After weeks of seemingly unproductive therapy,
Lucy, thinking Stephanie is more interested in her husband than in Shane, tells Stephanie to leave. Soon afterward, Dean catches Lucy in bed with another man, and their marriage breaks up. As one might have predicted, Stephanie reenters the picture and gets Dean involved in a new type of bonding
therapy called "forced holding." As the new therapy takes hold, Dean and Stephanie become very close. And it isn't long before Dean contemplates leaving the mob, after his hood idol Luca (Burt Young) is arrested. But Shane then becomes a pawn as the mob seeks revenge.
Despite its interesting story idea, the screenplay by Jason O'Malley is often unbearably predictable, offering only one-dimensional characters. Shields is unconvincing as the concerned psychologist and O'Malley's transformation is undeveloped. With the exception of veteran character actor Young,
the other performers are only adequate. However, director Rupert Hitzig exhibits a good visual sense and photographer Stephen Katz has successfully captured the dark, tough streets of working class New Jersey neighborhoods. If more time and energy had been devoted to the script and the actors,
BACKSTREET DREAMS could have been a believable and involving film. (Violence, profanity, drug abuse.) leave a comment
