Les Anges noirs

This one is hard to watch. The serious tone of the story line, the edgy dual performance by John Leguizamo, and the dark Christian perspective will not win this work any fans in the Bible-Belt, for sure, but they also factor into the equation of elements adding together to make the viewer cringe and pull back not only from the story, but from the characters. By the time you decide whose side you're on, the movie is over and you're left feeling empty and incomplete from the experience. This is, without a doubt, John Leguizamo's "the Libertine," in that it may well be his best performance ever, and maybe 12 people will see it. I cannot say this film is fabulous, but I will say that John Leguizamo purely shines, so if you're a fan of his work, do yourself a favor and redbox this (at least), but if not, you may want to try "What's the Worst that Could Happen?" instead, wherein he costars with Martin Lawrence and Danny DiVito.

All in all? This is one of those dark obscure pools of goodness whose appreciation calls for a genre-fan, or a fan of the principal actor, to really enjoy the work. Otherwise, you may be disappointed.

I love John Leguizamo, so for me, it rates a 7.6/10 from...

the Fiend :.

In the flatfooted psycho-religio thriller "The Ministers," John Leguizamo plays Scripture-spouting twin brothers - one with a scarred face for purposes of differentiation - who've made it their life's mission to gun down those responsible for the deaths of their parents and brother, leaving religious tracts with the bodies as calling cards. Florencia Lozano plays a beautiful cop from the Bronx whose father, also a cop, was dispatched by the hood-and-mask-wearing boys years earlier for reasons that aren't entirely revealed till the end.

This Avenging Angel scenario has pretty much been done to death at this point, and "The Ministers" brings nothing new or interesting to the genre. Franc. Reyes is responsible not only for the contrived, melodramatic screenplay and lackluster, pedestrian direction, but also for eliciting some of the worst performances of their careers out of Leguizamo and that crusty, battle-scarred stalwart, Harvey Keitel, as a veteran cop with a secret. After all, with material this lame, it's rather hard to lay too much of the blame at the feet of the actors.

Rarely have I watched a movie that is so consistently bad in every scene; there is not one moment in the whole film that moves beyond bad. Not even a tiny spike. Harvey Keitel plays badly, Florencia Lozano plays badly, John Leguizamo plays badly... twice!

The story is probably recycled from a script back from the 70s and it feels as dated as you can possibly imagine. The only thing modern in the film were the cellphones and there were one or two scenes that featured them. Cops act like they are goons, everybody is Latino, the police work is prehistoric and so on.

Bottom line: avoid this movie at all costs. If you are really bored, try ripping out your own nails, it will be quicker and less painful.

Of course Boondock Saints wasn't the first movie, with people on a "mission", but you kinda feel like this goes a similar way. It also has some other people in it though and does not play for laughs or strays off into another reality. This stays grounded in "our" world, with real problems and some confusion (character and otherwise).

It stays morally ambiguous, which may or may not be a good thing (depending on your view of things, or how you liked the acting. Name checking aside (also character names, see John L. for that), it does not bring completely new things on the table. But what it serves, it serves up pretty good (for a low budget movie that is). Harvey ("Bad Lieutenant") Keitel is always dependable, though John L. seems not at the top of his game. I've seen him do better things, with his roles.

If The Ministers had a point to make, it didn't make it with me. After watching the film, I'm still puzzled as to what exactly it was all about.

Young Florencia Lozano loses her detective father Benny Nieves in what was a hit carried out by two hooded men who have killed before and leave these Bible tracts at the scenes of their crimes. Years later she is now a detective partnered with Harvey Keitel who was her father's partner and her supervising detective is Wanda DeJesus who was trained by Lozano's father.

The two killers known as The Ministers are also accused in the shooting deaths of a whole drug crew, a rather bloody bit of business that Sam Peckinpah would have been glad to choreograph. The two Ministers are played by John Leguizamo in a dual role as twins. One of the twins was badly burned in an apartment house fire as a child.

In fact Leguizamo has a whole agenda of scores to settle, but he also gets himself involved with Lozano, the non-scarred twin that is.

The Ministers has a confused message, a whole lot of violence and not a lot of rational sense to the plot. Seems a terrible waste of a lot of talented people.