“The Sopranos” may be coming to an end, but the mob isn’t going anywhere. HBO’s hit series rode to success by juxtaposing the emotional and financial demands of Tony Soprano’s two families. With “Brooklyn Rules,” “Sopranos” scribe Terence Winter attempts to incorporate a coming-of-age story into life in the 1980s on the outskirts of the Brooklyn mafia. But rather than giving this tale of friendship the edge it desires, the mafia association only cheapens the drama.

In the opening voice-over, Freddie Prinze Jr.comes out with fighting words. “I guess you could call this my confession, except I’m not asking for forgiveness,” he declares. The role has the potential to give Mr. Prinze — who rose to fame as an affable teenage heartthrob in such films as “She’s All That” and “Scooby Doo” — some much needed street cred. “Brooklyn Rules” admirably attempts to draw out the cold streak beneath Mr. Prinze’s genial good looks, but it never quite gets there.

The film follows three childhood friends as they transition into adulthood, but with the plot split between their storylines and the events of the crime scene circa 1985, neither gets enough attention.

Mr. Prinze plays Michael, a young man hoping that a Columbia education will be his ticket out of the borough. He’s on his way to law school, a path chosen because of his “ability to bull—-” and his “total lack of conscience.” Beneath his initial bombast, though, Mr. Prinze seems most comfortable as the lackey nice guy, and at rest, Michael reverts to that state. He grew up without a father and spends all of his free time with his two best friends, Carmine (Scott Caan) and Bobby (Jerry Ferrara). Of the three, Mr. Caan (whose father, James, oozed East Coast mobster in “The Godfather”) looks the most at home in the Brooklyn setting as the preening and self-obsessed Carmine. Mr. Ferrara almost succeeds in saving the well-meaning Bobby from the saccharine fate the plot has allotted him.

While Michael spurns the neighborhood they’ve grown up in, he has a strong affinity for his friends, who are both content to find their place within it.

The friends mock, cajole, and support one another as they forge their paths to adulthood. The doings of Mr. Winter’s mob are a wide-open secret in this Brooklyn neighborhood, and the three friends go about their lives amid dead bodies, abandoned weapons, and threats on their own lives.

Mr. Winter’s script is packed with all the one-liners, jibes, and lingo that have become de rigueur in mob films, but often fails the plausibility test. Though “wise guys” may be the term used to describe mobsters in the 1980s, Mr. Prinze and his friends take so much pleasure in saying it that the phrase rings false, while the endless ribbing between the friends works to varying effect.

When Alec Baldwin arrives as the local mob boss, he brings an element of danger that the film so desperately desires. His Caesar has the cold calculation of a quintessential mob screen idol, but his departure leaves a void that is the ultimate undoing of the film. So much of the mob set-pieces come off simply as a means of sexing up the script.

Michael and his friends exist on the outskirts of mob violence, but “Brooklyn Rules” is ultimately the story of how Michael educates himself, gets his girl (Mena Suvari), and hightails it out of there. As Carmine flirts with joining the organization and Bobby prays to every statue of Mary in Brooklyn, Michael is just biding his time.

When Ms. Suvari’s Ellen first meets Michael, she tells him. “On the outside you’re this cute, preppy guy. But on the inside, you’re obviously the devil.”

It’s a good bit of flirting, and Mr. Prinze gets some mileage out of cultivating this impression, but like much of the film, it’s ultimately just bluster.

mkeane@nysun.com