Lila & Eve

The morality of revenge has been used as theme in many occasions, Kevin Bacon and Jodie Foster have made similar works before. While it doesn't necessarily innovate crime genre, Lila & Eve works by displaying the intimate issue with strong performance. It's a story about two mothers seeking justice, yet ultimately absorbed by the vengeance in an attempt to cope with the overwhelming sadness.

Viola Davis as Lila is easily the best asset of the movie. She's completely believable as the grieving mother, often seen hurt and confused in highly sympathetic manner. She can draw audience interest and even suspense judgment as she dabbles in less savory acts. Since the movie almost entirely revolves around her trial, it's a boon to have a reliable lead.

Jennifer Lopez has a mixed record in acting. There are a couple of good movies when she delivered, but most of the material she worked were mismatches. The most advantage she has is she can appear to be not glamorous, as in Parker and The Boy Next Door. With Viola Davis, the chemistry is definitely present, she appears to be an integral part of Lila's story than just a guest star.

The movie is not without flaws though. It's hampered with a few crude developments. They can be a bit problematic, although not entirely jumping towards one-man-army action theme or overly bloody violence. Furthermore, the plot twist it tries to pull is predictable and it could've been more refined or subtle in its delivery.

Unfortunately, many elements of the movie are notoriously cliché. The vigilante thriller and the chasing cop aspect feel much too familiar. However, Lila & Eve has enough private sentiment to be emotionally engaging even though the cause might not be just.

Nice movie. I won't give away any spoilers here, but there were a couple of nice turns with J Lo and what happened at the end with women's group and the cop. There were several other movies this reminded me of, but I won't tell because it could spoil it for you. The acting was nice and impressive. There were a few slow scenes and the women tracking down of some of the hoods was a little too easy, but overall it was worth watching.

It's a touching and dramatic theme, and for that alone it has some merit and will appeal to some more than others. The movie feels a bit slow in the beginning, with the heavy drama, until it picks up about 40 minutes into it. Once I've made it that far, I became more interested and of course wanted to see how it ended. There was also a surprise that caught me off guard. Not the movie I'd save for the weekend, but it was satisfactory to watch overall. I thought that Viola and Jennifer did a good job.

One thing that the movie didn't do so well is the relationship between characters. Of course it's expected that the focus should be on the mother, but their interactions with others would have more depth if they developed the other characters a bit more.

This may be predictable (to some more so than to others), but it does have a solid idea behind it and the grieving aspect of it, is more than rock solid and gives the whole thing a ground to stand on. Jennifer Lopez may not be headlining any big Hollywood movies anymore, but she can still pull off major roles like this one (even if it was initially offered to another actress who had to turn it down due to another commitment she had herself).

While this is convincing, even in its way to turn things around, it does have this "break point", where people may get annoyed or disappointed where this turns to (quite literally too). But it stays in tune to the whole thing and gives a way into the mindset of our main character. Whether you agree or not and whether you think this is morally justifiable or not ...

"Maybe we could help each other." Lila (Davis) is a loving mother who has just lost her son in a drive by shooting. She is frustrated at the lack of evidence as to who and why and is getting upset at the police who do not seem to be doing all they should. She joins a grieving mothers support group and meets Eve (Lopez) who has also lost a child. When she tells Lila they should track down the killer themselves things become violent, and Lila and Eve do all they can to avenge their lost children. This is a movie that started out with so much promise but began to become repetitive and lose its edge the longer it went on. The movie is still very good and worth seeing but the movie Death Sentence with Kevin Bacon was very similar, and I though much better. The biggest fault I have with this movie is that it was geared toward the Lifetime movie crowd but added enough to make it an R rating. The movie never really makes it out of the Lifetime feel and to me that hurt it. Overall, not a bad movie and worth seeing, but essentially a hard edge Lifetime movie that doesn't really appeal to everyone like it should. I give this a B.