Amazon.com The euphoria of controlled chaos that courses through Benjamin Bratt's portrayal of poet, playwright, and actor Miguel Piñero comes as a welcome surprise. Known primarily as a television actor, Bratt burns his way through what could have easily been an overwrought performance with the surety of a skilled improviser. Piñero begins with the sudden success of the playwright, whose play goes from a prison workshop in Sing Sing to the toast of 1970s New York seemingly overnight, and the requisite fall from grace is expected (Piñero died in 1988 of cirrhosis of the liver). Yet the self-aware cool of Bratt's Piñero--who helps found the still vibrant Nuyorican Poets Café and pens highly successful film and television scripts, all the while ingesting a suicidal dose of alcohol, heroin, and cocaine--lends the film an honesty lacking in most depictions of edgy characters. Highly committed as author, social activist, and con man for the cool, Piñero sums it up with characteristic pith when he tells a television crew, "I have to keep doing bad to keep the writing good." Piñero is at once defiant and defeated, clichéd and transcendent. --Fionn Meade --This text refers to the Theatrical Release edition.
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