Much to stunt professional and prolific showrunner Ben Bray’s credit, the premiere of his feature debut at last year’s exiting installment of the Los Angeles Film Festival for El Chicano would be one for the history books.
Injudiciously, there are some festivals whose curators remained recalitrant on showcasing a latin superhero film as much as Bray insists that it’s more than a generic crime thriller set in the barrio. For all intents and purposes this week, he’ll be making that case with a premiere at the Palm Springs Film Festival in California on Tuesday at 7:30pm and on Wednesday at 4:00pm.
You can view a full listing of the films here for the festival which runs through January 14. In lieu of the screening of El Chicano, we also have a brand new poster which you can view just beneath, along with the wind-up and the pitch from the festival:
An avenger roams the barrio, taking down drug dealers, cartel kingpins, and gang bangers in this action-packed thriller with the world’s first Latinx super hero at its center. As children, police detective Diego Hernandez (Raúl Castillo) and his identical twin brother Pedro witnessed the masked vigilante El Chicano— said to bring justice to East L.A.’s streets for a century — take down a neighborhood crime lord. Now, in the wake of ex-con Pedro’s supposed suicide and as a Mexican drug lord prepares to move into town, Hernandez stumbles on a connection between Pedro and El Chicano — and forges one of his own. Comedian George Lopez adds sterling support in an uncommonly serious role as Hernandez’s boss in this blood-soaked nail biter.
Veteran stuntman Ben Hernandez Bray makes a startling feature debut — gritty, tough, and stylish. The energy never flags as the film delivers chases, shootouts, explosions — both literal and emotional — and a story that packs a wallop.
Entertainment Studios is releasing El Chicano in theaters on March 22, 2019.
