Illegal Tender

Or, the Latino family that preys together stays together. Twenty-one years after a drug dealer gets gunned down in the Bronx, his widow (Blood Work’s Wanda De Jesus) and teenage son (Rick Gonzalez) are menaced by his killers, who’ve belatedly tracked them down in their suburban home, and they decide to fight back. John Singleton produced and Franc. Reyes (Empire) wrote and directed this lopsided effort, where 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. Pistol-packing De Jesus evokes Pam Grier in spots but certainly holds her own. R, 108 min. (JR)

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