Empire

Any chance that Empire might be all that different from other drug-dealer-trying-to-go-straight movies disappears lost with the opening voiceover, in which heroin mini-kingpin Victor Rosa (John Leguizamo) rattles off a dozen street life clichés, starting with the line, "damn, if I'd known then what I know now!" Never mind that the plot includes the hero losing his shirt and his boss's drug money in a Wall Street scam perpetrated by a savvy, Caucasian, uptown con artist (chameleonic actor Peter Sarsgaard): that only proves Victor is a sucker, not that his story is any different from those of drug dealers depicted in scads of other movies from the last 15 years--2002's Paid in Full or 1994's Sugar Hill, for example. Universal even admits as much in the film's press kit, which compares it "in theme and execution" to a list of urban gangster films but then goes on to trumpet the fact that Empire is the first time this recycled story "has been told from the point of view of a Latino character." So there you go: same movie, different skin tone. Not a necessary purchase. [Note: DVD extras include audio commentary by director Franc Reyes and cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau, a 22-minute making-of featurette, 29 minutes of deleted scenes, a four-minute segment from the film's L.A. premiere, a soundtrack sampler of audio excerpts, production notes, cast and filmmaker bios, trailers and DVD-ROM features. Bottom line: A handsome extras package for a been-there-done-that flick.] (R. Blackwelder)