Latino Hollywood Time: Illegal Tender

I have to give John Singleton major respect for giving Puerto Rican actors their time to shine. I was going to see this movie regardless because I think Rick Gonzalez is gorgeous. (It's a weakness, but if an attractive man plays a lead role, chances are it's going to catch my eye.) However, I read in JET magazine that the cast was many shades of Puerto Rican people (Afro-Latino, Black Puerto Rican, Puerto Rican), and I really respected that. African American actors get shunned plenty of times for trying to go against stereotypical roles, and Latino actors absolutely get treated the same, if not worse, so for Singleton to produce and direct a movie with a dominant PR cast was something I really respected. Hopefully this will bring more unity with minority actors to look out for each other on the big screen. In areas like the boroughs of New York and Chicago where we live together, it was only a matter of time before the movies reflected this. Besides "Breakin" and "Breakin 2," I haven't seen that type of representation.

Illegal Tender Review:

Not only did I respect the cast variation, but I also liked how Singleton took this movie against the grain. Instead of having Latinos in a poverty-stricken neighborhood looking mean as hell, he went against the stereotype and made the main characters upper class in an extremely nice neighborhood. Whatever car Wilson (Gonzalez's character) was driving was overwhelmingly tight! Wilson grew up with the spoiled, rich kid lifestyle thanks to his mother fleeing his parents' past. But the witness protection program is a joke, and his mother has involuntarily made herself a subtle gangster. No, a woman protecting her children who just happens to know how to shoot. When Wilson finally finds out that his rich kid life has to stop cold after some visitors arrive, all hell breaks loose, and he's on a mission to save his mother.