Pointless, gratuitously violent, and stupid, stupid, stupid.
Illegal Tender (2007)
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Reviews Counted:47
Fresh:8
Rotten:39
Average Rating:4/10
Consensus: Lackluster acting and a ridiculous plot make the over-the-top Illegal Tender an unrealistic bust.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for violence, language and some sexuality.
Runtime: 1 hr 48 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Aug 24, 2007 Limited
Box Office: $3,054,430
Synopsis: After the gangsters who killed his father come to settle a score, a teenage boy and his mother turn the tables on the killers. Producer John Singleton (Four Brothers, Hustle & Flow) and... After the gangsters who killed his father come to settle a score, a teenage boy and his mother turn the tables on the killers. Producer John Singleton (Four Brothers, Hustle & Flow) and writer/director Franc. Reyes (Empire) join forces to tell the story of one Latino family's quest for honor and revenge as the hunted become the hunters in the new thriller Illegal Tender. Wilson De Leon, Jr. (Rick Gonzalez) is an exceptional college student with an adoring girlfriend, doting mother and a future full of promise. He has never wanted for anything, and he has never been forced to stand his ground. But when ghosts from his mother's past come back to haunt his present, he must defend his family...and quickly turn into the strong man his father prayed he'd become. Nothing could stop Wilson's mother, Millie (Wanda De Jesus), from protecting her two boys. Forced to flee her home after gangsters killed her husband, she made an oath to give her children only the best. But all that changes when an enemy from the past catches up with them. It's finally time to take action--and now, they're done running. Weapons at the ready, Wilson, Jr. and Millie prepare for a final showdown with the murderer who robbed him of a father and her of a husband. Now, in a battle fueled by family ties and blood feuds, it will become very clear what happens when anyone tries to come between this son and his mother. --© Universal Pictures [More]
Starring: Rick Gonzalez, Wanda De Jesus, Dania Ramirez, Tego Calderon
Starring: Rick Gonzalez, Wanda De Jesus, Dania Ramirez, Tego Calderon, Manny Perez, Gary Perez
Director: Franc. Reyes
Director: Franc. Reyes
Screenwriter: Franc. Reyes
Producer: John Singleton
Composer: Heitor Pereira
Studio: Universal Pictures
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Reviews for Illegal Tender
Illegal Tender isn't quite the mess you expect this time of year, a film that achieves a certain level of originality by reversing gender roles.
The real mystery here is why this slapdash semi-effort didn't go straight to video.
While Illegal Tender has misguided pretensions towards Serious Filmmaking, it's surprisingly likeable if you see it instead as a cheesy thriller good for a lazy Friday night.
It wants to be Scarface but makes The Pacifier look plausible by comparison. (Do real bodyguards hold their guns sideways?)
A laughable low-budget mess about third-rate drug thugs, put together with the sheen and polish of a fourth-grade Christmas pageant. Except with really loud reggaeton.
There's supposed to be an underlying message here about the value of family and giving up the bad life for respectability, but writer-director Franc Reyes is really just using it as an excuse for a standard (at best) gangland shoot-'em-up.
A cohesive story is an afterthought in yet another gangster movie that pretends to denounce violence and materialism while so obviously reveling in it.
Potentially compelling questions of ethnicity, privilege and societal inequities lurk in the background, but instead of addressing them, the film flounders in melodrama.
It's helpful if you walk in with the expectation that it is a genre picture -- not a parody, not camp, but a loving homage to gangster movies of the 1980s like Scarface.
A solid meat-and-potatoes B-movie with enough personality to spin it in unexpected directions.
Illegal Tender has its moments -- including the aforementioned shootout involving Millie -- but it is ultimately undone by the litany of genre cliches it embraces.
The movie isn't manic enough to qualify as pulp or coherent enough to serve as a social critique.
De Jesus' outbursts are the only excitement in 'Illegal,' since the performances of most of the rest of the cast are barely amateurish and Reyes' story is not so much old-school as it is old-hat.
Grace is not the film's strong suit. But trashy -- albeit sporadic -- fun is.
definitely has the market cornered on sexy suave mothers not afraid to pull out a mini-arsenal in order to protect their families.
...a lurid and overwrought action film that imagines it's a drama of a family in crisis. In the end it doesn't really succeed as either.
The script is so formulaic, the atmosphere so bright, the acting so off, it's a bit of a mess.
Illegal Tender isn't a very good film, but it shows a genre filmmaker who is full of ideas and unwilling to settle.
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