John Leguizamo, starring in a film for the first time in his career, is so good - and the first half of "Empire" is so well done - that when the terrible plot letdown comes, about an hour into the film, you want to strangle Franc Reyes, the writer-director. He had something that could have been the kind of sleeper "One False Move" or "Red Rock West" were, and he let it slip through his fingers.

Leguizamo is Puerto Rican Vic Rosa, owning a heroin territory in the South Bronx and making a fortune at it. His brand name is Empire (another dealer's is Dancing Queen). Vic is bright, aware of his business and its ramifications - as he tells us in a great voiceover narration - and he is beginning to get bored. (A neighboring dealer tries to take over one of Vic's corners and must be stopped; Vic tells us "20 feet means $30,000 a week.") His girlfriend Carmen (Delilah Cotto), a college student, has a friend who introduces them to her boyfriend Jack (Peter Sarsgaard), a rich young investment banker with a penthouse office and a Tribeca loft for Vic to use. What we hope for at this point is that the bright and articulate Vic will show his chops by getting into Jack's business, and maybe even taking it over.

But now the film steps into a huge plot hole, where everything we expect to happen does indeed happen, and instead of surprising us, it simply loses power: Jack is not who he seems, no surprise, and slowly ensnares Vic and his money in a very bad scam, also no surprise. Even then, a bit of smarts on Reyes's part might have saved the day: crosses, double-crosses, even triple-crosses are allowable in a situation like this. But, as Arnold Schwarzenegger famously said, it is "…Not to be." Instead, there's more and more gunplay, more guns in fact than probably exist in Afghanistan, more shootouts, and then - Reyes's idea of a switch - a completely unbelievable double ending.