A Latino teen with a bright future is forced to battle the sins of the past when the thugs who killed his father return to finish off the rest of the family. College student Wilson De Leon, Kr. (Rick Gonzalez) has an adoring girlfriend and a doting mother, but never once has he been compelled to stand up for what he believes in. When gangsters killed Wilson's father, his mother Wanda (Wanda De Jesus) was forced to flee from her home in order to protect her two sons. From that point on, Wanda
determined to give her boys the best life possible. Now that past has returned with a vengeance, but Wanda isn't running anymore. As the murderous gangsters attempt to finish the job that they started by killing Wilson's father, mother and son combine their wits to turn the tables on their tormentors and stand their ground. Empire director Franc Reyes writes and directs a thriller produced by John Singleton. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
More care seems to have been taken with the cut of Gonzalez's sideburns than with the shape of the story, and the hyperbolic soundtrack does most of the work of the mise en scene.
Plenty of movies have combined a blazing-guns revenge story with a family dynamics drama, but Illegal Tender never gets the mixture right, lurching between bullet-happy shootouts and overwrought domestic content.
Clearly aware of the impact of visual style on the narrative, Jonathan Ogilvie uses a stylised 1920 Australian setting for a love triangle that involves all the basic drivers of human frailty
A bloody shoot-em-up with the accent on ruthless South Bronx drug dealers with lifelong grudges, and their scantily clad Latina 'Simple Simon Says' assassin sidekicks.
You know the film is off to a paltry start when you see the rookie Rick Gonzalez attempt to strut bad-boy, awww-yeah stuff. Instead, he feels like a 21-year-old boy just going through puberty.
There's a supposed family values clause tossed into the violent mix that goes something like, the family that slays together, stays together. And with assassins closing in, mom needs her son to spend some quality time with her, mowing them all down.
This movie was interesting...the time span...the past affecting the future...it's all here. Shows the importance of communication between the last generation and this generation regardless of whose in the wrong...family first!
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