By

Vernon Nickerson

Guns, Gangs, Politicians…and Brotherly Love in LA

Writer-Director Richard Montoya’s gritty urban fantasy, Water and Power, is also a taut and suspenseful tribute to the City of Angeles, anchored in a world where the  Chicanos have ascended to the heights of law enforcement and political leadership in Los Angeles.  Water and Power is the compelling and entertaining story of how unconditional love between two brothers raised by a single father becomes tragically distorted when played out in an alternative and extremely conditional universe.

Power, masterfully portrayed by Nicholas Gonzales, is an ambitious and rising star within LAPD,  who is a cocaine user. Newly estranged from his beautiful wife and daughter, Power completes what appears to be a contract killing of a street soldier in  high-ranking  gang. His older brother, Water, played with gusto by Enrique Murciano, is a state senator who earnestly desires to plant 1 million trees along the Los Angeles River as his legislative legacy. Power and Norte/Sur, his friend/ex-con/narrator (Emilio Rivera), seeks Water’s help to save Power from his LAPD colleagues, who want to capture him dead-or-alive and the street gangs, who simply want him dead.

During the long night showcasing the sparkling jewel that is Los Angeles after dark, this dramatic chain of events leads Water to Turnvil, the identified (Savior of the Peace) portrayed by veteran character actor Clancy Brown.  Dressed from head-to-toe in white with silver shoulder length hair and goatee ala the stereotypical Kentucky Colonel, Turnvil is perfectly willing to help save Power in exchange for a suitable sacrifice and ritual footwashing from Water, the now-desperate supplicant. Exactly how this Faustian bargain plays out in Montoya’s Los Angeles, “where nothing is concrete- except the river” can best be seen and heard by viewing this deliciously multilayered Los Angeles homage.