If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I also saw the original stage production in LA in 1978/79. I was likely the only Anglo in the audience, which was itself an experience worth buying a ticket to. I would have gone back several times if I had had the money.Olmos was featured in the local TV commercials for the play and was riveting to watch. That commercial could be re-released as a short. In the theater, you could NOT take your eyes off him.I have seen the film several times and own a DVD copy. While there are some cringe-worthy moments and some obvious "staginess", the film does credit to the original vision and is worth watching. One should never watch a work of art in an attempt to learn about history, or science, or anything else. Art is art.

This movie's best feature is that it is a perfect "opening up" of a play, just enough to be cinematically compelling, but never leaving the stage behind. It was done so well that the artfulness of the storytelling almost made me forget about the evasiveness of the story being told. I kept looking for reasons to like this, until the cop out ending made me wonder if there had been a single moment of historic or sociological truth in the previous 100 minutes.It would have been perfectly sensible to end the story with an honest and factual recitation of the subsequent crimes committed by the men who had been falsely accused and abused by the legal system. It was perfectly bizarre for Valdez to invent "let's pretend" destinies for the defendants, full of success and happiness. Am I supposed to be amused by this phony rewriting of reality? The very real evil of American soldiers, journalists and judges is laid bare, but the evil crimes of Mexican-American gang members are self-righteously minimized and sidestepped. In its trivializing of gang violence this play/film is a perfect illustration of the phoniness of Mexican-American pride. The Big Message is that double-talk and rationalizations of violence within "Chicano" communities is perfectly acceptable, so long as you can point your finger at systemic Establishment (read "White") racism. I guess that's the true nature of El Pachuco, then and now: swaggering BS.With some self-reflective honesty this could have been a worthwhile phantasmagoria of fashion, music, ethnicity, crime and injustice. Instead Valdez squandered his talents on dishonest propaganda.

Myabe I was expecting too much. After hearing about the play for so many years, I finally was able to get my hands on watching the film version. First off, its not really a movie per se as much as its a filmed version of the play. To me, this was the truly distracting thing of the movie. Two totally different mediums, totally different ways of telling a story. The dialog at times came off as stilted and trying too hard to sound like *authentic* Hispanic speak. Eh. To each their own. Olmoses performance in it is astounding, coming off as extremely despicable.Some rather nit picky things. It bothered me when Olmos comes out as the (heavily implied) Aztec native. The connection is made that a true Mexican is one who is touch with their native roots, a rather narrow definition in my opinion. Also, there is almost absolutely no feminine perspective in the entire movie. None, other than the stereotypical loca chica drunk. Those were the things that I had the biggest problems with.Henry's own demons, for me at least, is what makes this movie worth watching, and the manipulation of even then modern cinema could have done a lot with that, but squandered it. We see him caught between being one who is in between the hyphen (the idea as a Mexican-American, he is neither Mexican nor American, but in between) asking if he should listen to his conscience or El Pachuco (or even if his conscience is El Pachuco, which is a personal theory of mine, but opens a whole 'nother can of worms that ties into the Aztec thing that is enough for a thesis paper)Fantastic soundtrack, and if you should happen to have the luck of coming across it, than I would definitely buy it, as its excellent.All and all, its an interesting perspective on Mexican-American lives in LA during the 1940's, and a small glimpse of the Zoot Suit Riots. Final grade: C+ for effort.

I saw this on the Independent Film last year, very good film, revolves around Gangs but gangs in the 1940's.Also a film about Latinos (my people) and the problems they face in the inner city.It's much better than those terrible soap opera's in Mexico, this film is a musical but it's also a drama focusing on different Hispanic characters.