Henry Hill Equals Chris Paciello; Not!

So on Saturday night, before Hyperkinetic and I went bar hopping, we smoked a few bowls and sat down to watch “Kings of South Beach,” the A&E movie that depicts the rise and fall of one time South Beach wunderkind Chris Paciello. The cable television network that gave us Dog The Bounty Hunter billed the flick as a cross between "Donnie Brasco" and "Scarface." Crap is what it is.


I’ve seen better acting from my autistic mutt, which is sad considering Jason Gedrick (playing the title role) and Donnie Wahlberg (as the deep cover cop who takes down Paciello) are two of Hollywood’s most underrated actors. Gedrick just broods throughout the entire movie. He never really gives any depth to Paciello’s character. He fails to give us a sense of Chris’s inner , what drives him to bury his New York goombah past to become South Beach kingpin. Wahlberg is a little bit better as Andy Burnett, a fictional character based on the real Miami Beach police detective who befriended and eventually took down Paciello. A real laugher was using Steven Bauer (Manolo from Scarface) to play mob boss Alphonse "Allie Boy" Persico. At least get someone who looks like a Guido play the man. Someone like Chaz Palminteri or Joe Mantenga would have filled the role nicely.

I also didn’t get why the producers changed everyone’s names. Paciello was “Chris Troiano,” while his celebrity groupie socialite partner Ingrid Casares was “Olivia Palacios.” I guess the producers were afraid Ingrid’s daddy was going to sick his lawyers on them. And the script was full so much cheese, they could package it up and sell it to people with WIC cards.

In one of the early scenes, Troiano is strolling through Risk, Paciello’s first nightclub venture that law enforcement authorities believed was torched so the insurance money could be used to open Liquid. He spots Olivia making a beeline to the ladies room to snort some blow. He chastises her for getting high. “You’re no good to me with your nose full,” Troiano grouses. “I don’t want you making trouble. Trouble costs me money.” It doesn’t get better.


Another problem with the script is that it embellished Paciello’s penchant for violence. In real life, people knew Paciello had a nasty temper, once beating the shit out of a boxer inside his nightclub for supposedly calling a friend the N-word. But the movie takes the violence up a notch. The movie introduces two fictional Russian mobsters who try to shake Troiano down for a piece of Liquid. In one scene, Burnett is behind the wheel of Troiano’s red Ferrari. Troiano is riding shotgun. The two Russians pull up next to them in a BMW and spray bullets at Troiano and Burnett. Troiano climbs halfway out of the passenger’s side door and returns fire. Later on, the two Russians end up dead in the trunk of the car (supposedly on the orders of Allie Boy who wants to protect his money laundering operation through Troiano’s nightclub ventures).
It’s too bad this movie utterly sucked. Chris Paciello is the classic tale of a Miami rebirth. This city has a history of scalawags, scoundrels and sociopaths who come here to remake their image and become pillars of society. In his prime, Paciello (who is out of prison and living in Los Angeles) owned two of the hottest nightclubs on the Beach. He was expanding his empire north. He gave thousands of dollars to local charity like the Make a Wish Foundation. He was banging celebrities like Sofia Vergara and Niki Taylor. But eventually his criminal past caught up to him. It’s the kind of stuff that made Henry Hill a legendary mob snitch and "Goodfellas" one of the all time greatest mob movies. Unfortunately "Kings of South Beach" doesn’t come close. -NA