"What you are about to see is a combination of fact and fantasy. Weigh the facts and enjoy the fantasy," exhorts El Pachuco (Edward Olmos), sinister hero, alter-ego, narrator, and stage manager of Luis Valdez's energetic Brechtian musical, Zoot Suit. Valdez makes no pretense to realism (Zoot Suit presents three alternative endings), but his film is one of the "truest" to emerge in recent years, and possibly the one best reflecting Chicano sensibilities. Valdez weaves a setting from Chicano myths and stereotypes--for men, the zoot-suited Pachuco; for women, flowery, full-skirted romance; for both, la familia. Reality enters in the form of a plot based on a true incident in the summer of 1942, at the height of wartime jingoism, when a murder at Sleepy Lagoon in Los Angeles led to the arrest of 600 Pachucos, the trial of 22, and life sentences for 12. Among the latter group is Henry Reyna (Daniel Valdez), whose story is chronicled by Valdez in a stagey, highly stylized manner that thwarts sentiment and invites analysis.