Illegal Tender

Introduction

Puerto Rican drug dealer Wilson DeLeon (Manny Perez) is about to go out and meet crime lord Javier Cordero (Gary Perez) when his heavily pregnant wife Millie (Jessica Pimentel) tells him not to go and that all the money he has made has been invested in a company she set up, Milson Enterprises Inc. and that they are set for life. Wilson decides to go and, predictably enough, he is shot and killed just as she delivers their son.

Fearing for her life, and that of her newborn son, she moves to Connecticut and the story flashes forward 21 years where Wilson DeLeon Jr. (Ricky Gonzales, recently seen in Reaper) is a star student with a 4.0 grade point average at Danbury College and dotes on his half-brother Randy (Antonio Ortiz) and girlfriend Ana (Dania Ramirez).

Whilst shopping in a supermarket with Randy, Millie (now played by Wanda de Jesus) spots another shopper and recognises her as one of Wilson's killers. She plays it cool but rushes home and tells Randy and Wilson Jr. that they are moving. Wilson doesn't want to and hassles her until she comes clean about his father and why she is in constant fear for their lives. He doesn't quite believe her until a romantic evening with Ana is interrupted by two hit men. Having practiced with a pistol that his mother gave him, Wilson takes Ana down to the basement and fires at the armed intruders, wounding one.

Now he fully believes his mothers tale and decides to sort things out by travelling to Puerto Rico and negotiating a truce with Javier Cordero but nothing is as simple as he hoped.

Video

Handsomely presented in anamorphic 2.35:1, this is a high quality transfer with deep blacks and good colour reproduction.

Audio

The English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is clear and has a uses the surrounds well when there is loud music playing or in the gunfights.

As well as the French and German audio tracks, there are plenty of subtitles and the Spanish dialogue is subtitled when necessary.

Extra Features

There are three deleted scenes, none of which are particularly memorable or would have added much to the finished product.

The 21 minute Making of Illegal Tender features interviews with the principle cast and crew and some b-roll footage - it's not the most awe inspiring or comprehensive look at the making of a film, but it's not the worst either.

If you so wish, you can watch the 'Dame Dame' Music Video (by Que No featuring Dicky Ranking and Abusivo) which comes with a three minute making of.

Conclusion

Produced by respected filmmaker John Singleton (director of Boyz n the Hood and Higher Learning) and written and directed by Franc Reyes, whose previous film Empire covered similar territory (Latino gangsters), Illegal Tender is a title with a duel meaning, with the opening footage of a love scene fully explained near the end of the film, but suffers from a horrible absence of logic. If your husband had just been killed in a gangland feud in New York, wouldn't you to flee with your infant son a bit further than Connecticut? Wouldn't you try and keep under the radar by putting sentimentality aside and not naming him after his late father? Would you be able to hold your own in a gunfight with professional hit men after your first experience with a gun resulted in you hitting three cans from a full clip? Why would two hit men decide their best plan of attack to kill the DeLeon family is to start shooting at the outside of the house with pistols? Where are the police when this gunfight erupts in an affluent Connecticut suburb?

Quibbles with reality aside, this rarely extends itself beyond mediocre and is easy to see why it bombed at the US box office and has gone straight to video everywhere else. The dialogue is clichéd and, despite Wanda de Jesus' fine performance, this seemed like a sub-par blaxploitation knock-off (Latinosplotation?) with de Jesus in the Pam Grier role but Illegal Tender is not, and never will be, as entertaining or seminal as, say, Coffy or Foxy Brown.