John Leguizamo gives an effective heart-felt performance as down and out professional boxer sadly between gigs and now homeless with wife and 2 kids.
Highly evocative of the more widely acclaimed The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) with Will Smith, which coincidentally came out only a year before this film, and highly evocative of iconic Gloria (1980), the movie shows what happens when you make a series of bad decisions in life - and have trouble getting things back on track.
Leguizamo, apparently by design, is, to be fair, at times hard to root for. And just when he thinks he's getting a sympathetic ear and a "break" they all get snatched away at a critical moment.
The wife and kids, to their misfortune, also, can't help but lead a schemey scammy life as well but it doesn't help when dad sets bad example after bad example in front of the kids.
With the construction contractor's father in a methodical frantic search for Leguizamo presumably with some sort of lifeline, the viewer is just sure they would run into each other on the random in the final minutes of the movie - and life is beautiful again.
But I guess the filmmaker made a conscious decision to make a statement that life isn't always beautiful AND you can't rely on people giving you break after break to get through life.
