La Mission
Directed by Peter Bratt
With Benjamin Bratt, Erika Alexander and Jeremy Ray Valdez
Rated R
Showing in Santa Fe at UA DeVargas (562 North Guadalupe) beginning June 11
(Q-and-A with director Peter Bratt and Santa Fe-native La Mission co-star Jeremy Ray Valdez on Saturday, June 12 at 7:30 pm. $10)

Review by Adam Perry (mppedro@gmail.com)

Prior to a few days ago, the 2000 film-version of Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys was the only major motion picture I'd watched that was not only filmed in a city, but a neighborhood where I've lived. Seeing Michael Douglas booze it up in on-screen in Pittsburgh, where I grew up, to the sounds of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen was cool, but checking out the jarring new movie La Mission—shot in San Francisco's culturally rich Mission District, where I lived from 2002-2008—was far more rewarding.

La Mission wasn't based on an acclaimed novel, but the film's heartfelt drama and realistic depiction of a gritty, harsh-reality-filled neighborhood are seriously penetrating on a level that the majority of recent urban-set movies don't reach. Directed by Peter Bratt and starring his brother Benjamin, La Mission—alternately funny, sad, thought-provoking and romantic—poignantly touches on sociological and economical subjects while utilizing San Francisco as a colorful backdrop.



“You can take the man out of the Mission, but you can't take the Mission out of the man,” one of lead-character Che's (Bratt) homeboys in La Mission says during a low-rider jaunt through North Beach after Che expresses concern about his teenage son, Jesse (Santa Fe-native Jeremy Ray Valdez), who is soon leaving for UCLA. A recovering alcoholic and ex-con, Che wants the best for his son but worries that the young Mission High senior will disown his father and his father's friends' lifestyle and traditions once he moves to LA.

In a series of events reminiscent of a similar Sopranos story-line, La Mission takes a sharp and emotional turn when tatted-up tough-guy Che discovers that his son's excuses for repeatedly not showing up to hang out with his father's buddies (the “Mission Boyz”) are lies. In truth, Jesse is sleeping with an upper-class white guy and even dancing shirtless at a gay club in the Castro district, which is just a few blocks from the Mission District but might as well be on Mars.

A confused Che beats and disowns his son, later accepting Jesse's homosexuality on the condition that he never mentions it again. Even after Jesse is shot and critically wounded by a homophobic young Mission thug, Che still violently asks his son to make a choice between an openly gay life and a life without a father.

For Mission District veterans, La Mission is at least partially a big-screen replay of phenomena we've seen first-hand—gentrification, hate crimes and battles over rising rents, just to name a few—but the Bratt brothers' competent expression of such serious, and far too common, stories is remarkable. Especially if you haven't lived in the Mission, La Mission is a “must see” movie if such a thing exists. It's just hard to get over how much it makes me miss the vibrant neighborhood's beautiful parks and peerless taquerías.