Returning from prison to The Bronx and “Gun Hill Road,” an otherwise devoted dad (Esai Morales) with a hatred for gays discovers his now teenaged son (Harmony Santana) likes to dress up in ladies’ clothing while calling himself “Vanessa.”
This familiar urban drama from first-time director Rashaad Ernesto Green has little narrative momentum, essentially alternating between scenes of the gay son being a wounded outcast and the increasingly angry father demanding that he act straight.
Subsidiary characters — the mom, the son’s boyfriend — are barely sketched, and the movie limps to a close without delivering much of a message except a bland injunction to be tolerant. Tenderness and good intentions don’t necessarily add up to a movie.