Gun Hill Road (2010)
A Different Kind of Bronx Tale
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
Published: August 4, 2011
http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/08/05/movies/a-different-kind-of-bronx-tale.htmlOld-fashioned values prove inadequate to present-day problems in "Gun Hill Road," a family drama set in the Bronx, with its heart in more than one place.
Returning home after a three-year prison stint, Enrique (Esai Morales), a hardened career criminal, discovers an emotionally distant wife (Judy Reyes) and a teenage son, Michael (Harmony Santana, in an astonishing debut), saving up for sexual reassignment surgery. Horrified and furious, Enrique embraces the only definition of masculinity he knows, beginning a backslide down the criminal path that his watchful parole officer (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) is unable to prevent.
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'Gun Hill Road' review: Tale of family and acceptance resonates with multiple levels of hurt, doubt
Joe Neumaier
Friday, August 5th 2011, 4:00 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/2011/08/05/2011-08-05_gun_hill_road_review_tale_of_family_and_acceptance_resonates_with_multiple_level.htmlA coiled feeling hangs over writer-director Rashaad Ernesto Green's assured, engrossing feature film debut. After three years in prison, Enrique (Esai Morales) returns to his Bronx neighborhood, his wife, Angela (Judy Reyes), and teenage son Michael (Harmony Santana). But while Enrique's been gone, Michael has acknowledged to himself, his mother and his friends that he's a transgendered homosexual, preferring to dress as a woman and date men.
Enrique, already having a difficult time adjusting to life as a parolee, can't accept his son's sexuality, pushing his family to the limit and himself further away.
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Gun Hill Road
by Kevin Langson
EDGE Contributor
Friday Aug 5, 2011
http://www.edgeboston.com/entertainment/movies//features/121153/gun_hill_road"Like father, like son" certainly does not apply to the central characters of "Gun Hill Road", the emotionally astute Bronx-set drama that played Sundance this year.
As the film opens, typically machismo-laden Enrique (Esai Morales) returns from three years in prison to a son and wife with whom he has lost touch--and a guns-and-gambling street life, to which he seems to re-connect with much more easily.
