LA BAMBA

Directed by Luis Valdez

For many rock fans, Feb. 3, 1959, will be remembered as the day the music died. On that date, an early morning plane crash in an Iowa cornfield took the lives of three of rock’s earliest stars: Buddy Holly, J.P. (The Big Bopper) Richardson and Ritchie Valens (born Richard Valenzuela). Holly, a pioneer of rock, remains a key influence in contemporary music. The Big Bopper was best-known for his rockabilly classic Chantilly

Lace. But Valens, only 17 when he died, was perhaps rock’s brightest hope. A young Chicano from Los Angeles, he rose quickly to stardom with such hits as Donna and the reckless Latin sound of La Bamba. As portrayed in the film of the same name, Valens (Lou Diamond Phillips) owed his fame to a supportive family and his own unswerving ambition. Despite a lame script, La Bamba captures the spirit of one of rock’s unsung heroes.

Death hangs over the story from the opening shot, a scene of falling debris from a plane crash that kills a student in a schoolyard below. That haunting sequence recurs frequently: the stricken student was Valens’s boyhood friend, and Valens, too, felt destined to die in an air disaster. Director-writer Luis Valdez’s script oversimplifies its portrait of the Valenzuela family —Ritchie’s single mother is long-suffering, his half-brother jealous. Only the relationship between Valens and the man who discovered him, record producer Bob Keane (Joe Pantoliano), seems genuine. But with a convincing performance by newcomer Phillips—and the exhilarating Latin rockers Los Lobos, who bring Valens’s sound back to life—La Bamba is a refreshing blast from the past.

-NICHOLAS JENNINGS