Washington Heights

"Washington Heights" is a gritty slice of life and death in a New York City neighborhood near the George Washington Bridge. A young artist and illustrator is struggling to find his place and work and has female problems as well. After his father, a bodega owner, is shot and paralyzed by a robber, the artist must take over the store, and discovers other problems, one of which shows him some direction. A good storyline, editing, and performances make this film a success. I did not feel like a distant observer--I was drawn in quickly--a good sign.

It took a while to get into this film and its movement and its characters, but I got there and was never lost for a moment in a very complex story of many tiers and personalities -- all within a seemingly simple entry-level USA neighborhood.

I assume the movie was whot in 16mm film and/or digitial video, and once again, a low budget does not mean a poor story. The direction and editing worked well in a story where the ensemble cast was homogeneous and perfect.

Excellent. Excellent. Excellent.

"Washington Heights" brings fresh elements to the old, but continually autobiographical for young filmmakers, story of the immigrant's son who is striving to get out of the old neighborhood.

The lead could have been played by John Garfield, but as the old neighborhood is now a Dominican Republic stronghold, he's played by Manny Perez, who was also very good in A & E's "100 Center Street." Another alum from the same show, Bobby Cannavale, only gets to do a similar role as he did in "Kingpin." but we also get to see other TV series refugees as well in different roles.

What's new here is not only does he want to be an artist, but a comic book artist escaping into an exaggerated fantasy world. The usual conflict with the father is O'Neillian as it is not just rebellion, but complicated with responsibilities.

The financial struggles of each character ties them all together in a tense web of dependencies, making the climax more shattering to all.

Freshest is the lack of sexism and genuine affection for women; all the women are employed, independent, and not dragging the men down with unwanted pregnancies; nice to know characters in such movies have finally discovered birth control (though I missed a couple of plot resolution points involving the women).

The very long list of thank you's in the credits reinforces that the film was a labor of love with minimal budget, but the resulting cheap, available light cinematography is less Dogma-noble and more just plain hard to see.

I really liked this film mostly because i can relate with the main character, being latino and his situation with his art. Heights is a good film but it suffers from some mayor flaws. The simple fact is that the audience is cut off to the emotional climax. The reason? Bad editing? perhaps. Even though we get some climax with the father and son character, the relationship of the two lovers never comes to fruit actually their problems are never fully explained. This left me at least confused by the death of their relationship. Lack of resolution seems to be the main flaw of this movie, the conflict between the best friend and his father was never resolved. I know its hard to put all of this in the film since the film makers wanted to leave enough room about the main character and his father but perhaps these other situations should not have been brought up since it only leads away from the core of this movie. In the end Washington Heights is a good film and i would recomend it and im sorry to see that it was overlooked by some critics.

Starring Tomas Milian and Manny Perez – 'Washington Heights' is a low budget drama set in a Latino neighborhood in NYC.

A young comic-book artist (Manny Perez) wants to escape his Latino neighborhood. When his father is crippled by a robber's gunshot, the young man is forced to run the family bodega.

The movie was shot in a budget (low resolution video and poor audio) with low profile actors.

The plot flowed well for 85 minutes but the last 5 minutes were just terrible. We don't know for sure if Perez and his girlfriend remained together and if Angel ended-up in jail for the shooting.

4/10