Back from Prison, Life Has Changed in Gun Hill Road

Details

Gun Hill Road
Directed by Rashaad Ernesto Green
Motion Film Group
Opens August 5

Related Content

• Four Gay Movies You Could Have Seen This Year
  December 29, 2011
• 'Talking Landscape: Early Media Work, 1974-1984'
  February 8, 2012
• Mini Wine Growlers Coming Soon to Brooklyn Winery
  May 22, 2012
• Bloomberg's Budget Cuts Brooklyn's After-School Programs in Half
  May 20, 2012
• Matzo Balls And Disco Balls: Pairing Great GoogaMooga's Food And Music Offerings
  May 18, 2012

More About

• Esai Morales
• Harmony Santana
• Brooklyn (New York City)
• Judy Reyes

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Life is a series of constant adjustments to ever-shifting realities in Gun Hill Road, a Brooklyn-set indie about a criminal, Enrique (Esai Morales), who returns home after a three-year prison term to find that things aren't quite as he remembered them. Specifically, wife Angela (Judy Reyes) is trying to end a romantic affair, and—much to macho Enrique's chagrin—son Michael (Harmony Santana) now cares more for bras than baseball, spending his evenings performing spoken word in drag and dating a guy while planning a sex change. The ensuing issues of acceptance, conflicted masculinity, and cultural insularity may be familiar, but Rashaad Ernesto Green's debut distinguishes itself via an authentic sense of milieu and a nonjudgmental empathy for its flawed characters, whose quests to reconcile past dreams and traumas with present circumstances are given compassionate consideration. Though two late plot developments are borderline-contrived, Green's direction is marked by mature dramatic and aesthetic understatement. That quality also characterizes the intense, sincere turns by Morales and newcomer Santana as a father and son struggling to both understand each other and redefine themselves. A striking piano-scored scene of Michael donning feminine attire encapsulates the film's belief in self-transformation.