Franc. Reyes
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If Brian De Palma's "Scarface" were an after-school special starring John Leguizamo, it'd be called "Empire."
"Empire" is a low rent version of the Al Pacino flick "Scarface," without the ruthless, ultra violent brutality of the latter film.
“Empire” is in the tradition of films like “Scarface,” where crime pays for a while but then finally doesn’t, and a lot of people wind up with bulletholes.
The film owes as much to Boiler Room‘s odious view of capitalistic greed as it does to the rise-and-fall swagger of Goodfellas and Scarface, meaning it’s a copy of a copy of a copy—the notes of genuine personal tenacity that could be found in entertainments as far back as The Public Enemy and Hawks’s Scarface have long been replaced with transparent, cocksure braggadocio.
The characters seem to act and talk more like the denizens of blaxploitation films such as New Jack City and Tougher Than Leather than other Latin gangster films such as Scarface or Carlito's Way.
These opening scenes, and solid performances from Leguizamo and Peter Sarsgaard (The Salton Sea), are the only things that put this film above the slew of direct-to-video Scarface wannabes available at your local Blockbuster.
John Leguizamo ("Empire") provides both comic relief and tension as Beck, a junkie who cottons on to Jake's habit.