...let me just say this Latino superhero film is a highly entertaining, wildly innovative, and trailblazing movie...

| Nov 10, 2020

It does have some riveting moments and some very strong acting.

| Sep 28, 2019

Ben Hernandez Bray's "El Chicano" seldom amounts to anything more than a crude prototype for the kind of Latinx-driven superhero movies that Marvel and DC should already be making by now.

| Original Score: C- | May 14, 2019

The first all-Latino superhero movie is unfortunately an uninspiring B movie.

| Original Score: C | May 13, 2019

[Director Ben Hernandez] Bray wants the film to be another straightforward superhero empowerment narrative. But he keeps stumbling onto complicated questions he doesn't want to acknowledge or resolve.

| May 9, 2019

When your lead actor doesn't seem to be having any fun in an action movie, there's not much left for audiences to cling to. Genre fans will need to look elsewhere for their gunslinger fix.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 9, 2019

Frenzied, ferocious avenger drama, filled with graphic violence

| Original Score: 4/10 | May 7, 2019

El Chicano isn't that great of a movie, but it's ambitious and I am glad that it exists because it means we're walking toward more movies that star members of the Latinx community.

| May 7, 2019

This is a nasty, brutal little movie, more in the vein of a grindhouse revenge flick than anything else. But it's effectively done...

| May 7, 2019

...the humorless and dark tendencies feel utterly labored. Dripping in brutish violence as a police procedural, El Chicano is a sunken saga riddled in strained grade-B crime drama cliches.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 5, 2019

That the abrupt gear-shift from Dick Wolf-style cop drama to Marvel Netflix-style superhero bloodbath in Act 3 works at all is a feat in itself.

| Original Score: 6/10 | May 4, 2019

This is pure old school action, and if you miss the old Stallone flicks like COBRA or Bronson movies like DEATH WISH, you're likely to groove on this.

| Original Score: 7/10 | May 4, 2019

I hope we get more of this character soon because I definitely want to see more.

| May 3, 2019

If you're hoping El Chicano might do for the Latino community what Black Panther did for African-American(s) last year by making a positive cultural impact and celebrating representation at the highest levels of Hollywood - don't hold your breath.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 3, 2019

While an all-Latinx crime drama is an all-too-rare occurrence, the film's attempt to create a cool new hero feels sadly flat.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 3, 2019

[El Chicano] functions most effectively when it explores the dangers of moral ambiguity.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 3, 2019

Like in this year's remake of Miss Bala, the Mexicans in this movie are the bad guys, the drug-running cartel members ruining it for the rest of us in the United States.

| May 3, 2019

The problem here isn't the fairly apparent budgetary limits - it's the limitations of style and imagination.

| May 3, 2019

It's dull and banal, coasting on familiarity from beginning to end. Here, the clichés don't celebrate a reunion. They're at war.

| Original Score: C- | May 2, 2019

"El Chicano" stands as a solidly acted and technically accomplished spectacle, the latter likely the result of Hernandez Bray's time delivering stunt magic behind the scenes as a stunt coordinator.

| May 2, 2019