American Me

American Me

A police squad car pulls up at a bus stop. A man and woman are waiting there. It is late at night; they have just come from a wedding, and both are dressed formally. The cop gets out of the car, looks at the man and asks him if he has been in prison. Just like that. Is there some kind of sad aura that enables a cop to look at a man and know that he has spent most of his life behind bars? “American Me” is about the guy standing on the corner.

His name is Santana. He is an American Hispanic who grows up in East L.A., joins a street gang, and goes to prison while still high school age where prison becomes his school. By the time he returns to the streets, he is an educated criminal.

The U.S. penal system has done its work which, in this movie, is neither crime prevention nor punishment but the training of criminals.

Edward James Olmos, who directed the movie and plays Santana, says it is based on a true story. That doesn’t mean much; by the time movies are finished with them, true stories are as fictional as anything else. What I felt watching “American Me,” however, was that it was based on a true situation on the reality that street gangs and prisons (with drug sales for financing) conspire together to create a professional criminal class.

Santana is two men, according to a woman’s voice we hear in the opening moments: One of those men is shy and sweet and cannot dance or make love; the other man is a murderer. The movie covers many years in Santana’s life as one tries gradually to make itself heard above another with less moral compunctions about killing people; it does not hold out much hope for either.

Olmos creates such a character here; smoking continuously (cigarettes being status symbols inside), hunched over, eyes to the ground, telling hard truths. He is a leader by nature. From inside prison, he runs an operation outside; the movie even argues convincingly that this is typical, that prisons control drug traffic. On the outside, where he falls in love with a good woman (Evelina Fernandez), he is already big because of his size on the inside.

Santana leads his gang in a revolt against the Mafia don (Tony Giorgio) who controls all the street drugs a war breaks out; wrong war at wrong time makes enemies of blacks who ought to be friends; Santana fights to keep things together as new hothead generation comes along: He was once a hothead himself.

The film was mostly shot in two difficult locations: The streets of East L.A., and inside Folsom Prison. It is familiar with these worlds. The language, the clothes, the attitudes are all done with that quiet assurance that comes from a director who knows his material.

Olmos even reaches outside the natural boundaries of his story to include an opening sequence that takes place before Santana is born.

He shows the Zoot Suit riots in Los Angeles in 1943 and 1944, when Hispanics were beaten up by uniformed servicemen. These scenes aren’t included just for atmosphere; they set up a crucial secret which will color Santana’s whole life.

“American Me” is different in its approach to its subject matter.

Though it shows Hispanic neighborhoods in crisis, though it shows a generation being lost to drugs, guns and crime, it does no scapegoating the tragedy isn’t blamed on racism (that dependable standby), but seen as part of the disintegration of society. Olmos talks about those grim statistics: nearly 800 murders a year in Los Angeles; more than half of all juvenile offenders accused of murder.

He spends much time working with young prisoners. He knows their streets. He sees a world where gang killings are being replaced by murders committed simply for the adrenaline rush of pulling the trigger where drugs and gangs define reality where there are no alternatives.

A character like Santana, born into an earlier version of such a world, may eventually come to see what’s wrong and what he must do through hard lessons and his own underlying strength of character. But “American Me” wonders whether or not society will let him. We often hear talk about the need for leadership in ethnic ghettoes such as this one which Santana knows so well but what if only one kind of leadership is possible? What if the choices are crime or death?

Watch American Me For Free On Gomovies.