Benjamin Bratt puts his best foot forward in this cliché-riddled drama set in San Francisco's Mission District barrio.
Written and directed by Bratt's filmmaker brother Peter Bratt, "La Mission" is about widower Che Rivera (well played by Benjamin Bratt), a tattoo-covered MUNI bus driver and ex-con, whose academically driven teenage son Jesse (Jeremy Ray Valdez) is secretly gay.
Che brutally kicks Jesse out of their home when he discovers photo evidence of Jesse's hidden lifestyle.
What follows is a preachy diatribe on Che's self identity as a low-rider whose masculinity he compares with the posters of Marlon Brando and Clint Eastwood that adorn the garage workshop where he keeps his super clean hot rod looking good.
An unspeakably lame subplot involving a romantic entanglement between Che and his African American agenda-wielding neighbor Lena (Erika Alexander) pulls the narrative off its axis.
More "after-school-special" than theatrical release material, "La Mission" is a movie that doesn't know how to get at the real story it wants to tell.
Rated R. 117 mins.
