South Bronx Heroes

Two Bronx kids (a brother and sister) run away from foster care and hit the streets. The kids go from abandoned tenement to tenement to avoid being found by their foster parents. Their so-called faster parents it turns out use the kids and several others to make money by putting them in kiddie porn. One day the run into Tony (Mario Van Peebles) in his sister's apartment where they broke in to use the shower and eat. Tony's fresh out of Mexican prison and reluctantly helps the kids get back at the pornographers.

'Heroes' isn't as sleazy as the plot may suggest it's actually a pretty decent drama as the kids are quite believable in their roles. Van Peebles character is a smart-alec but he's smarter than the neighborhood ruffians and has a soft spot for his pet ferret. A little light on action but in the end it's a decent flick.

I read the box for this movie at a video rental store, BUT, the movie itself was never returned, so I had to wait almost (if not) 10 years to see this GREAT MOVIE! Worth the wait, this movie was VERY entertaining.

Notice this: The MAIN reason I liked this movie is because I have a relationship with the topic.! What is neat about this movie is that each person(s) has/have a particular spot of music that identifies the character(s) at representation!

Real life siblings Mario and Melissa Van Peebles star as brother and sister about Mario coming home to the South Bronx after a stretch in a Mexican prison. Some of the neighborhood toughs find out in short order he can handle himself.

At the same time two other younger siblings Brendan Ward and Melissa Esposito are running away from a foster home they've been placed in after their parents died. This is one really bad foster home where the foster parents have a sideline in kiddie porn from the charges that are sent there. One of Ward's friends has gone missing and he's decided it's time to split.

Mario and Brendan are an unlikely pair to bond, but bond they do and in the end sort of help each other.

South Bronx Heroes is shot in the South Bronx, I certainly recognized some of the locations. It's a sincere effort and young Mr. Ward is most appealing in his performance. And they certainly sound like kids from New Yawk.

Sad to say the production values are lacking and the cast could have used better direction.

My review was written in October 1985 after a Times Square screening.

William Szarka's "South Bronx Heroes" is the sort of earnest U. S. indie feature which might play on public tv but lacks the oomph and tough approach to make waves on the action film circuit. Filmed two years ago as "Runaways" (with another alternate title, "Revenge of the Innocents"), pic is the second theatrical release in the last month from Continental Video.

Unusual story structure presents parallel tales of two sets of brother-sister combos, one white and one black. Paul (Brendan Ward) and Michelle (Melissa Esposito) are, respectively, 14 and 11-year-old runaways from their evil foster father Bennett (Martin Zurla), who hole up in the basement of a derelict South Bronx apartment building, scrounging food out of trash cans. Tony (Mario van Peebles), is just out of a Mexican jail and moves in with his sister Chrissie (Megan van Peebles), who earns their keep working as a teacher while Tony loafs.

The two couples meet halfway through the pic when Paul & Michelle (it sounds like a Lewis Gilbert pic) break into the van Peebles' apartment in order to take much-needed showers. Fleeing, Paul accidentally drops his cache of incriminating kiddie porn photos taken by Bennett, who used another foster child, six-year-old Scott (Jordan Abeles) in his porn pictures before killing the kid. When Paul returns to fetch the stills, Tony grabs him and they decide to blackmail Bennett together. A highly artificial happy ending has the young heroes trapping Bennett and turning him over to the FBI.

With child abuse and perils of existence on the South Bronx turf (filmed on location) as topics, Szarka takes an unfortunately wimpy approach, even substituting the artificially squeaky-clean pairs of siblings format for any romantic or sexual content. Hoary use of fadeouts between scenes and generally sluggish pacing hurt as well.

Bendan Ward is impressive as the young hero, particularly in a lengthy monolog recalling how Bennett abused his foster brother Scott. Mario van Peebles is overly theatrical at times, but has some entertaining scenes, especially when he dresses up, referring to himself as "Dark Gable" and serves his sister some "brown champagne" (a bottle of Pepsi). Effective casting has his real-life, beautiful sibling Megan van Peebles as sister Chrissie. These central performances deserved a more realistic, hard hitting story treatment.

I picked up South Bronx Heroes on a DVD rack for a dollar.It was the second feature of a two feature DVD paired with South Beach.I guess Digiview Entertainment has done well for themselves picking up the rights to low budget films that fell through the cracks and might have been forgotten otherwise.

Anyway, "South Bronx Heroes" is about two children who run away from their foster family because the foster parents are child pornographers who put their foster children in their films and photographs.Paul and Michelle(the sibling children) run away to the South Bronx where they set up residence in the basement of an abandoned building. Later in the story they meet up with Tony and Chelsey (who are played by true-life siblings Mario and Megan Van Peebles) when they sneak into their apartment to take a shower.Both the older siblings help to bring their foster parents to justice.

This film was actually not a bad film despite the low production values.In 1985 it probably played in a theater on The Deuce (Times Square in New York City) as part of a triple feature and then probably disappeared quickly.Many films with just about the same production values as "South Bronx Heroes" did during the early eighties.

Just a final note, I saw on the actress profile for Megan Van Peebles that she passed away this year(2006).The Van Peebles Family have my deepest condolences for their loss.