Nice little film

I recently watched this movie for the first time in quite a number of years. In my opinion the low budget both hurt and helped the film at the same time. It helped by giving it a real gritty realistic type of feel. The downside of the low budget is that the film feels a bit rushed especially towards the end and they obviously couldn't get the rights to use any actual doo wop/rock songs from the 50s. Although I will admit that some of the songs on the soundtrack are quite good, especially the wedding song at the end.

All of the cast did a very good job but to me Sylvester Stallone is the highlight. The scene where he buys his girlfriend the engagement ring and the scene with Chico by the pigeons are both hilarious. You can actually see a little foreshadowing of what was to come in the original Rocky, with Sly's performance in The Lords of Flatbush. It's a bit surprising that United Artists initially wanted nothing to do with him acting wise for Rocky after viewing this film. I have nothing against action films and I have enjoyed several of Sly's action roles. But I think it's really a shame that he didn't have more of a diverse career because the guy does have some talent as a dramatic actor. Probably the last time to date that he showed his full dramatic potential was in Cop Land. His acting was also real good in Rocky Balboa but he's not given much credit for that since he was playing Rocky for the sixth time although the film overall got mostly positive reviews.

At the moment it seems like he's still focusing on action films. But as a fan I hope that Stallone has at least one more character driven role left in him before his movie career is over.