John Leguizamo (Spawn, Collateral Damage) plays Victor Rosa, a neighborhood drug dealer and crime boss who watches over his territory like a dictator yet always helps his people out. One day after putting a hit on a rival crime boss (Rapper Fat Joe), he experiences a tragedy that will forever change him. Forced to confront his own life, he decides to leave the business behind and go legit with the help of Wall Street businessman Jack (Peter Sarsgaard  K-19: the widowmaker, The Salton Sea) who will help him finance stocks and soon Victor will learn to trust again. But he will soon learn that leaving the past always bears a price, and it's a price he won't be able to pay.
  I like John Leguizamo and he gives a great performance as Victor in a more off-type of role. John has a knack for playing naive and shy characters and it was a change of pace to see him portray such a vicious character with such tenacity. John manages to outshine everyone in this movie, showing his experience in the acting world and never coming off as too over the top. His character is the most unique of the bunch, often displaying complex emotions. He is always vicious and violent yet never comes off as unlikable, and this is a trait that only Leguizamo himself could achieve.

Unfortunately, this is a fiasco for the record books. The movie, noticeably, takes much of it's formula from better gangster flicks, especially "Carlito's Way" and rips apart the movies, taking each element, pasting it together in this. The plot is nothing new, it's been done before and done to death and nothing in this really surprised me. The entire plotline and character developments are annoying, slow and so predictable it's disgusting. Many of the actors in here over act of under act their roles, giving us these caricatures of gangsters and thugs that intend to be intimidating and are just plain annoying. We get over the top putrid performances from big stars such as Denise Richards (Wild Things, Valentine) who hams it up big time, often screaming at a comedic tone in moments of drama never pulling off her dialogue. We also have a small and inadequate role from Isabella Rosellini, who plays the big cheese of the mobs "La Colombiana".
    She tries desperately to make her character work, often dressed in tacky clothing and spewing awful one-liners that most likely could be found in the waste basket of "The Godfather" producer's offices. We also have terrible performances from rapper Fat Joe who tries hard to come off as a threatening character, but all the time I was asking if he was ever going to stand up and run around; Rapper Treach also has a small and insignificant role as Victor's friend "Chedda", a militant warrior who stands by him no matter what, but just comes off as another caricature of past characters. The movie tries desperately to achieve its noir-ish feel with often terrible camera angles that just seem pedestrian in nature. Certain scenes in the movie, though intended to be dramatic, come off as pathetic and I found myself laughing aloud in the wrong moments. Franc. Reyes directs this like a film student, never contributing anything new or different to talk about.

Been there, done that. This is a contrived, over the top, badly made gangster drama that does nothing but show us two-dimensional cardboard cutout characters and overused plot elements from other movies.