Entertainment

THUG JUSTICE, DANBURY-STYLE

MEMO to all my peeps on the run from drug dealers who killed your dad and have been trying to shoot your mom for the last 21 years: Don’t drive around in a car with a vanity plate that spells out your name.

“Illegal Tender,” about a Bronx family who enters a sort of DIY witness-protection program and hides out in Danbury, Conn., to avoid thugs who want them dead, is a sluggish, talky little gangsta drama. There isn’t even a decent shootout scene until more than an hour into the movie, as a college student (Rick Gonzalez) gets sucked back into the criminal history of his dad, who dealt drugs in The Bronx before he was gunned down.

Some of the world’s stupidest assassins have been trying ever since to kill the student’s mom and the dealer’s widow (Wanda De Jesus), a peace-loving little mouse transformed into a tough-talkin’ mama who shoots down experienced hit men on her front lawn. (Which, apparently, is OK with Connecticut police.)

A climactic trip to Puerto Rico to confront the crime boss behind the attacks leads to a ridiculously easy solution for everyone and reveals a hidden motive for the 21-year war on the widow. Problem: The hidden motive has nothing to do with her and makes no sense. The real mystery here is why this slapdash semi-

effort didn’t go straight to video.

ILLEGAL TENDER

Zero stars

Running time: 108 minutes. Rated R (violence, profanity, sex scene). At the Empire, the Orpheum, the Coliseum, others.