![]() ![]() When he gets a job as a janitor at the local Frito-Lay factory, he takes the opportunity with all the enthusiasm he can muster, smiling through various indignities and grateful to be providing for his family. The arrival of a baby forces them to reconsider but an unwelcoming job market, one especially unwelcoming for someone who looks like Richard, makes life a constant struggle. Longoria, and the screenwriters Linda Yvette Chávez and Lewis Colick, keep things light even as Montañez (now played by Jesse Garcia) falls into a life of crime with his partner Judy (Annie Gonzalez) by his side. It’s hard not to get at least mildly involved though in the story of Richard Montañez, as he grows up as a kid balancing his Mexican-American identity in 60s California while being targeted at school and physically abused at home. Her small-screen tutelage is hard to shake in this earnest and at times efficiently entertaining, yet also rather plodding rags-to-riches tale that aside from the odd flourish, feels very much like a TV movie. Ahead of this summer’s landmark DC adventure Blue Beetle, centering a rare Latino superhero, Eva Longoria has found an unlikely success story to propel her to the title of film-maker, having cut her teeth on television. Despite Latino audiences over-indexing at cinemas in the US (in 2021, they had the highest per-capita attendance, averaging 1.7 visits a year compared with 1.3 for white audiences), there remains a disappointing dearth of big-screen representation (a report last year showed that just 5.2% of leads in film were Latino or Hispanic).
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