You have no idea how satisfying it would be if the real-life story of “Buffalo Bushido” had a Hollywood ending.

To wit: Native son comes home to the city he loves to make a film about a native son coming home to the city he loves.

And the film that native son shot here with professional film actors turns out to be great.

That would be the big, gushy Hollywood ending to the tale. Cue the strings, alert the media, make sure everyone has the right duds for next year’s Oscarfest – or at least next year’s Spirit Awards (that’s the loose, funky dinner where they give out awards for independent films).

Buffalo Bushido

Two and a half stars (Out of four)

(The extra half star is for the film’s obvious Buffalo appeal.)

Peter McGennis’ film about a haunted young man who returns home

to Buffalo to see his old friends, all struggling with some of the same

childhood issues. Starring McGennis, Jesse L. Martin, John Savage,

Leila Arcieri, Fred Weller and Bruce Glover. No rating, but R

equivalent for nudity, sex and language.

World premiere Friday in the Market Arcade Theater.

If only. No matter. To me, Peter McGennis –who’ll be 40 in the fall – qualifies as a local hero anyway.

What Buffalonian can feel anything but pride and gratitude for a native son who insists on coming home to make films with Buffalo locations, mix national performers with local ones, etc.?

McGennis not only did it for all of “Buffalo Bushido,” he did it again with “Queen City,” which, just recently, filmed Vivica A. Fox around town (in the Colored Musicians Club, for instance) in a film about cops and Buffalo’s teeming jazz history.

Don’t listen to a soul who insists that Buffalo is a second-rate town — not when a whole generation of creative Buffalonians (now in their 30s and 40s) can’t stop themselves from returning home for their work despite current economic travails. I’m talking about McGennis, the most persistent, but also the Burtons, whose Five Sisters company filmed their mother’s script “Manna From Heaven” here, and writers Greg Ames and Lauren Belfer, whose books “Buffalo Lockjaw” and “City of Light,” respectively, were set here.

Other cities may get more ink, brighter neon and lots more money. Find me a city, though, that gets more love from those raised in it than Buffalo.

“Buffalo Bushido” is a sad and haunted story whose Buffalo audiences will delight in its Buffalo locations — “Look, there’s Delaware and Delavan!” (McGennis was raised a couple of blocks away); “Look there’s the Peace Bridge! And the Hotel Lenox on North! And the Albright-Knox Art Gallery! And Hoyt Lake! And the old Memorial Auditorium! And the Elmwood-Franklin School soccer field!” (McGennis went there; his mother taught there. My daughter was one of her pupils.)

The familiar locations just keep on coming—Forest Lawn, all the places a Delaware District kid with an eye and an acute sense of social division would shoot if he had the chance.

It’s the story of Davis, a very strung-out young man who returns to Buffalo after 15 years full of drugs, hospitalization and personal chaos. He makes contact with his old childhood chums (Jesse L. Martin and Leila Arcieri) with disastrous results.

Or, as the film has it, it’s about “a man who finds his way home with the heart of a child.”

Finding out the secret they all share is what the movie is all about.

The major problem with the film could have been remedied easily, it seems to me.

Then again, maybe it couldn’t.

McGennis is his own star, as well as writer and director. He is not, God help us, the natural actor that Vincent Gallo is. He’s a handsome guy with plenty of screen presence, but, especially in a part like the one he wrote, an actor needs some real, professional tricks.

I’ll say this: nonpro that he is, McGennis, as an actor, gets across the mood he wants for his story. Unfortunately, he can’t quite get the pauses—and therefore the rhythm and tempo — right. (See “City Island,” another film opening tomorrow, for a hilarious blast by Alan Arkin, playing an acting teacher, at actors and their meaningful pauses.)

But his problem might have been solved if he’d only switched roles with actor Frederick Weller (of TV’s “In Plain Sight”), who plays the doctor boyfriend of his old girlfriend (the lovely Arcieri). Weller and McGennis look a little alike. Both are tall and gaunt with haunted eyes.

The difference is that Weller is an acting pro from an acting family (Peter Weller is a cousin). If he’d been the lead, the film might have found its proper rhythm.

But that might have entailed a more open schedule than Weller had; and, as well, a different salary than McGennis could afford. In the real world of indie film, my simple solution might not have been simple in the slightest.

The film is told willfully and oddly, with sudden episodes that seem pulled out of David Lynch, or comic books, and with references to Samurai culture (Bushido is the samurai code).

It’s a very personal film, which is what is both good and bad about it. That personality makes the film nothing if not awkward and misshapen. But it’s also what makes it hard to forget.

It’s dedicated to Brendan Pfalszgraf, the brother of McGennis’ best friend, David, who was killed in an auto accident when he was 20. You’ll understand the dedication when you see the film.

To their eternal credit, Martin, Arcieri, Weller and, especially, a hilarious Savage give their professional all in McGennis’ cause and offer glimpses of what might have been.

Lorna Hill has a small part. But wait until you hear what comes out of the mouth of former Buffalo Police Commissioner H. McCarthy Gipson.