Fathers and sons. So much tension and so much attachment. Because of this intense involvement, the formation of every man's personality is influenced by his father's views and treatment of him. The expectations that each brings to the relationship create a potent brew that can produce either great satisfaction or deep conflict. The fact that fathers and sons often have lifelong battles stems from the powerful emotions that they elicit in each other.
This volatile relationship is explored in an engaging way in this Latino film directed by Alfredo de Villa from a screenplay by Manny Perez, Alfredo de Villa, and Nat Moss. The drama is set in the Dominican neighborhood of New York City's Washington Heights. Eddie Ramirez (Tomas Milian) is a Dominican immigrant who runs a local bodega. It's a very busy place thanks to his kindness to customers who can't pay and his genuine practice of good neighborliness. He hopes that his son Carlos (Manny Perez) will take over the store when he retires. But this ambitious and intense young man has other dreams. He works in the East Village as an inker of comics and is at work on creating his own project that he wants to sell to a well-known publisher. His girlfriend Maggie (Andrea Navedo) is a seamstress who does not appreciate playing second fiddle to his comic book creations.
Everything changes when Eddie is shot during a robbery and is paralyzed from the waist down. Carlos, who has never forgiven his father for betraying his wife with many affairs, suddenly is forced into the role of caretaker for his helpless parent. In one of the film's most poignant scenes, he must clean Eddie up after he soils himself.
Carlos also has to look after the store in his father's absence. Much to his dismay, he learns that Eddie secretly took out a loan from Sean (Jude Ciccolella) in order to pay for his wild spending. This building superintendent has a son, Mickey (Danny Hoch), who also is not given any respect. He wants to enter a bowling championship in Las Vegas but Sean just ridicules him about it. To raise the money needed for this dream, he steals some money from the apartment of Tito (Roberto Sanchez), who is Maggie's drug-dealing brother. The consequences are not what he or anyone else expects.
Like most sons, Carlos and Mickey want their fathers to believe in them and to honor the choices they have made in order to fulfill their dreams. The drama reveals just how deep this yearning goes in each young man. The one person who goes through the greatest transformation is Eddie whose grandiosity is deflated by his new life in a wheelchair. He begins to see himself afresh and comes to respect his son as a talented artist with his own path to take into manhood rather than the one he's mapped out for him. The performance by Tomas Milian is a tour de force.
