Bratt reveals Piñero’s intensity, talent
by KC Jones Feature editor

    The new movie Piñero has intense Latin influences that result in a passionate, in-your-face story that pulls the audience into the life of Latino icon Miguel Piñero.

   The film’s use of rhythmic Puerto Rican music moves the body and touches the soul.

   Piñero is an independent film by writer/director Leon Ichaso, who has distinguished himself as a director of provocative and sometimes controversial projects. This film follows the story of a creative yet troubled Puerto Rican poet-playwright-actor Miguel Piñero (Benjamin Bratt)—a fitting subject for Ischaso’s style.

   While the film has an independent feel and is artistically photographed, using snappy black and white transitions, a creative effect, the movie presents sad realisms.

   Piñero, a Puerto Rican, grew up in the Lower East Side of New York City. His mother, played gracefully by Rita Moreno, moves the family there from a small town in Puerto Rico to escape an abusive husband. It is implied the father may have sexually abused Piñero as well.

   As Piñero grows up, he is thrown into hardcore prison for petty theft. It is during his incarceration that his creativity blooms into poetry and playwriting. This troubled artist reveals reality for many who share his culture.

   Piñero becomes a Latino icon after making waves in the artistic community and on the literary scene with his interpretations of the world around him. Piñero’s street reality takes the form of poetry, prose and plays, and most of his best work comes while he is doing time. Piñero’s prison experiences are soon developed into the Broadway hit Short Eyes.

   The film continues to follow Piñero’s life as the play receives tremendous critical acclaim with six Tony nominations. In 1976, his play is developed into a feature film, jumpstarting his acting and writing careers. Piñero eventually writes for and has featured roles in Miami Vice, Kojak, Baretta and Fort Apache, The Bronx.

   While in jail, he stays out of trouble, writes and becomes recognized for his talent, bringing success and notoriety on the outside. Tragically, he cannot soberly handle the real world.

   A troubling aspect of this film is the continued depiction of Piñero’s intravenous drug use and his anti-societal actions that keep landing him back in prison. Somehow, Piñero’s charisma charms many stars including Sugar (Talisa Soto), one of many who stand by his side throughout his unstable, self-destructive life.

   Piñero and Sugar are a sad couple. Both are Puerto Ricans who moved to New York with baggage full of abusive childhoods that turned into perverse, abusive adulthoods.

   Another sacrificing friend, Miguel Algarin (Giancarlo Esposito), co-founds the famed Nuyorican Poets Café in Manhattan’s Lower East Side to showcase up-and-coming Latino stars along with Piñero.

   Bratt’s in-your-face expressiveness gives Piñero a larger-than-life personality, and the language of his poetry shouts out Piñero’s story.

   Piñero became a hero to many in the theatrical and Latino worlds, but notoriety and fame may have hastened the bad-boy genius’ death because he died prematurely in 1988 from sclerosis of the liver.

   Director Ichaso draws from Latino cultural roots, infusing strong visuals with evocative atmosphere. The unflinching drama is a soulful insight to the dark side of street life glamorized by the rhythmic portrait of a poet and the people Piñero poisoned willingly with his companionship.

   Piñero is a devious renegade, a thieving junkie whose only talent is exposing the criminal mind. The movie becomes progressively decadent and ends hopelessly as his friends grieve and express his passing in the way Piñero had requested: reading his poetry and scattering his ashes over the Lower East Side.