The Bastard Sons is a gritty and engrossing crime indie that strays from gangster movie tropes in favour of grounded, intimate filmmaking.

“I’m not a good man because I was not raised by one.”

This line of dialogue from The Bastards Sons is spoken by its lead character Vincent, played by the films director and screenwriter Kevin Interdonato. In self-exile for a month after the murder of his New Jersey crime boss father, Vincent returns to his crew of non-blood-relative brothers Darius (Charles Malik Whitfield), Dobson (Joseph Sernio), Marco (Kirk Ponton), and Donny Mac (UFC legend Frankie Edgar) with a plan: take out their new boss Rome (Al Sapienza) who Vincent believes killed his father.

Of course, best laid plans often turn into nightmares, and so it goes for Vincent and his crew with much blood shed in this story of revenge and betrayal that successfully combines the Shakespearean plot-mechanisms of The Godfather with the work-a-day gangster exploits of Mean Streets. Set and filmed in New Jersey, it is impossible to ignore how the “Garden State” plays a major part with its diverse landscape, with downtown dives, suburban dwellings, and snow-laden landscapes all featured.  

Interdonato (who makes his directorial debut) isn’t interested in duplicating the usual mob-movie tropes. There are no forget-about-it’s to be found here. What The Bastard Sons does provide is an intimate gangster movie where the ramifications are not only the power structure of a criminal enterprise, but the further descent of a man’s soul into darkness.

Raised to be a “soldier” by his father, Vincent’s old-testament moral viewpoint of “eye for an eye; tooth for a tooth” is equalled only by his love and loyalty to his crew. Again, the usual mob-trope of “Italian’s only” is ignored in favour of a diverse group of criminals that evokes the dynamic previously seen in the Antonie Fuqua directed Four Brothers. Afterall, the only colour that should matter in this world is green.

Interdonato’s use of handheld camera is done without the kind of showy overkill displayed by other directors. While action scenes are not rich in choreography, they do contain an intensity in the stakes and a realism in the violence that can be bone-chilling in the dog-eat-dog realism of a world where death and betrayal are just as relevant as loyalty and power.

In The Bastard Sons, Interdonato’s breathes new life in the mob-film genre and proves himself to be a standout talent in front and behind the camera.