davideo-2 STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning Lila (Viola Davis) loses her son in a drive by shooting, and her life is turned upside down. Her life is then juggled between taking care of her other two sons, attending group therapy meetings and being fobbed off by the police. But then she meets Eve (Jennifer Lopez), a woman who lost a daughter in similar circumstances. Together, they set out to administer some street justice of their own until they track down those responsible for their kids killings. But as events roll on, Lila comes to suspect Eve may not be who she says she is.Despite still being what you could call a household name, and even a brand in her own right with the JLo label, it does feel a little like Jennifer Lopez's name on a film won't make it quite the draw that it used to, with this struggling even to find its way onto DVD over here. She's attempting a more mature role here, now a little older, and so glamming down with no make up and very plain, grey clothing. Despite all this, she's still not a great actress though, and it shows here as much as anywhere, and so it's a comfort that the slightly more dramatically gifted Davis takes centre stage.This really is a disposable, by the numbers effort, going through the motions in a really typical, clichéd 'ordinary people standing up to injustice' plot line, with nothing to make it really stand out or shine. This isn't helped by a slumberous, uneven pace, which struggles to establish an effective narrative flow, making it feel a bit incoherent. Feeling even more misplaced are some awkward attempts at humour, that feel completely out of place given the tone of the film, before building to a pretty nonsensical ending that seems to be trying to give the film some gravitas it doesn't have.Even with the star power involved, it's really not too hard to see why this one sank without a trace. **

swifty77 A half decent 'action' flick that kicks off with a promising start but then just really doesn't go anywhere, meandering around what could have been some much-needed 'BANG BANG PEWWW PEWWW' moments. Viola Davis is still brilliant however and Lopez was better than she was in 'Gigli' but not as good as she was in 'Out of Sight'. The twist comes around with about twenty minutes to go and, credit where credit's due, I wasn't actually expecting it. But the whole reveal is so pointless and makes TOO much sense for a twist anyway, it doesn't have any affect whatsoever. The story chugs along as if the twist never happened. If you're looking to kill some time, watch this.

TxMike I found this on Netflix streaming, my wife viewed the trailer and decided it was "too dark" for what she wanted to watch so I watched it alone.I can't say too much before the SPOILERS section below, but it is in Atlanta mostly in an area where lots of drug dealing goes on at night on the street corners. One night a teenage boy is walking home and was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting. Was he the target, or was he just in the wrong place?The police have a number of these to investigate and seem to be bogged down. Meanwhile the grieving mother, Lila, goes to support group meetings where she and other mothers offer each other support. But Eve catches her eye after one meeting, and together they devise a different plan, one to track down and eliminate the drug boss who is responsible for the killings.There are some shootings but never are they sensationalized. Yes the story is dark but we can identify with the characters. Jennifer Lopez gets a lot of criticism from some quarters but she in fact is a fine actress and is good as Eve. Viola Davis is Lila and as always gives a great performance.SPOILERS follow: In a theme borrowed from 'Fight Club', Eve is in fact not real, only the alter ego of Lila. A common shot is to have Eve right behind a hesitant Lila, egging her on to do what needs to be done. While Lila is non-violent and cringes when she finds a handgun in her son's backpack, Eve is ready to hunt down and kill the bad guys. In the end she succeeds and Eve disappears as Lila gains more confidence in her mission. The cops strongly suspect Lila in several murders but each woman in the support group start to come forward to say Lila was with them when the several killings occurred. It appears that she would never be charged and at least THAT drug boss is dead.

DareDevilKid Reviewed by: Dare Devil Kid (DDK)Rating: 3.5/5 starsViola Davis is a formidable presence in "Lila & Eve", playing the grieving mother of a teenage son killed in a drive-by shooting by a drug gang. Lila's (Davis) grief is a pain that no parent should ever experience, and Davis plumbs the depths of that anguish in a stern, electrifying performance that transforms the film into something far beyond a mundane revenge thriller. While on the surface "Lila & Eve" resembles a grief-stricken mom picking up a gun and wreaking vengeance on the men responsible for her son's death, the movie has much more in mind than purveying violent thrills. "Lila & Eve" feels like Viola Davis' "Still Alice". In a just world, this deeply compassionate and politically relevant revenge fantasy would do for Davis what last year's Alzheimer's odyssey did for Julianne Moore: deliver a long overdue Oscar to one of the finest actresses of our generation.Lila's grief is fueled not only by the fact her 18-year-old son, Stephon (Aml Ameen), has been shot down in the street, but also by the apathy displayed by the cops assigned the case. Coming at a time when "black lives matter" has become a national rallying cry, Lila's plight is particularly relevant as it portrays a situation in which the police form a task force to probe the slaying of a white cheerleader but the lead detective (Shea Whigham) on Stephon's case has trouble even remembering the young man's name.Though the current #BlackLivesMatter movement rightly focuses on the lives cut short by police brutality, it has yet to bring the pandemic emotional devastation of communities losing their children en masse to mainstream consciousness. (This is in part due to how news institutions debate the guilt of each young black man after his death — a distraction from the individual and collective trauma such losses engender.) Though the fatal drive-by shooting that incites "Lila and Eve's" plan for vengeance has nothing to do with the police, it's the cops' eager willingness to dismiss 18-year-old Stephon's (Aml Ameen) death as just another unsolvable casualty in the drug-turf wars — and by extension his mother's desperate need for justice — that sets the fast-moving plot into motion. Almost a month after her older son's killing, Lila is unable to embrace the agenda of acceptance, forgiveness and baked goods of her grieving mothers' support group. She quickly gravitates toward the group's one other dissident, Eve (Jennifer Lopez, much deglamorized), who recognizes in her new friend the roiling but unexpressable blood- lust Stephon's death has begotten. The movie is at its most emotionally wrenching in scenes filmed in a support group for moms who have lost children to gang violence. It's there that Lila meets Eve and is urged by her new friend to avenge her son.The movie's familiar thriller aspects are nowhere near as compelling as the two women's angry rejection of the unbearable powerlessness they've been told isn't just their lot to bear, but the right way to respond to their grief. Lila needs to do something other than clean her house to regain a sense of control over her life, and being around the trigger-happy Eve is at least preferable to spending time with those who tell her to take comfort in the fact that she still has another child. "As if I'd had a son to spare," Lila hisses. Director Charles Stone III ("Drumline") and screenwriter Pat Gilfillan mine complexity from the two women's sorrow, as when the they justify murder with their own version of feminism.Their first revenge killing is accidental if justified; Eve shoots a gangbanger just as he pulls out his own revolver. "He's somebody's child," stammers a shocked Lila, but she's all too susceptible to Eve's urgings that they threaten and kill their way up the local drug operation's hierarchy to figure out who exactly is responsible for Lila's son's death. When the two women eventually corner the kingpin (Chris Chalk) who ordered the hit on Stephon, he mocks Lila's pain by laying the blame for her son's death on her: "if she had been a better mother, her firstborn son would still be alive," he says. "Or maybe," he winks, "it's just society's fault." Whoever we should hold responsible, the film makes clear, culpability isn't as simple as whoever pulled the trigger.Understated, naturalistic, gut-wrenching, and wholly real, Davis is spellbinding as a woman who surprises even herself by how much rage and darkness she has inside her. Lopez's character is the more challenging one in some senses, for the film's tonal consistency largely depends on Eve's temptress role. The supporting actress occasionally seems more like an id-fueled sprite than a real person, but a late twist satisfactorily reveals why Eve is so sociopathically unbothered by the murders they commit.Though more conflicted about their killing spree, Lila too has her moral compass broken by anguish that affects her far more than she had realized was possible. The movie unexpectedly shades into the surreal as the two women unleash their wrath on a variety of gangsters, but through it all Davis' portrayal of a mother's pain, moving from hopelessness and despair to revenge and regret, gives the picture its impressive power. Though a standard-issue vigilante thriller on the surface, "Lila & Eve" is also a profound portrait of loss without recourse or justice, and thus an important depiction of a state in which too many people suffer today without much being done about it.