It’s hard to write about The Ministers, the new movie from the New York-born director Franc Reyes, without giving away some plot twist or another. That would be a shame, because a few curveballs, late in the action, are what give it an unexpected, and welcome, intellectual weight. Characters and events, I will say cryptically, are not what we thought they were. I left the theater turning the plot over in my head and re-evaluating characters, and that’s a compliment to the subtlety — at times — of Reyes’ screenplay.

There are some clunky moments too, that’s for sure. But more on that later. First, here’s what it is safe to say about the plot: John Leguizamo plays both Dante and Perfecto Mendoza, twin brothers whose parents were killed in a fire that their landlords intentionally set. Such fires, a movie newscaster reminds us in expository voice-over, were common in the 1970s — most notoriously in the Bronx — as crooked property owners sought insurance jackpots.

The blaze at the moral center of The Ministers scarred both brothers psychologically, and Perfecto physically. In the present day, we learn, they roam the streets as masked, murderous vigilantes who leave religious pamphlets on the bodies of their victims. Florencia Lozano, as a haunted young detective, and Harvey Keitel, as her grizzled partner, are in hot pursuit. It gets more complex and layered by the minute, but that’s a good place to start.

The big question, going in, is Leguizamo, and whether he can pull off the dual role as good and evil twin. I can assure you that he does, and without even a Spockian goatee to differentiate the two — though Perfecto, who does most of the brooding and shooting, does have a large burn scar on his face. For identification purposes, it isn’t even necessary. Leguizamo has the acting chops to embody both men, and he has done the hard work of developing both characters and giving each his own outlook, even his own set of mannerisms. Along the way I found myself forgetting that the same actor was playing both twins, which speaks volumes, both about Leguizamo’s performance and about the editing and camera trickery that allowed him to play scenes against himself.

It probably doesn’t have to be said, but Keitel, too, is a pleasure to watch. Just the little things — the way he banters with every woman he meets, flashes his pinky ring just so, pours a nip from his flask into his morning coffee — make you notice him even in the times when Reyes doesn’t give him much to do. Listen, in the first scene, to the way he draws out the word “beautiful” — “beautyful,” it sounds like. That is the sound of old-school Brooklyn right there. It’s Keitel’s background, yes, but the character’s background, too, and nice touches like that are what distinguish him as a pro.

That, actually, brings me to one of the disappointments of the film. Keitel, of course, is from Brooklyn, Leguizamo is from Queens, and Reyes is from the South Bronx. The events of the movie take place, obviously, in New York City. But, for a movie weighted with so much dark local history, the city felt strangely absent. There’s an occasional Manhattan skyline as an establishing shot, sure, and a block of outer-borough row houses as a backdrop here and there. But more often than not — unless you get a telltale Willis Avenue street sign — you can’t even tell which outer borough you’re looking at. If you’re not a New Yorkophile like me, that may not be a big deal, but it did feel like a missed opportunity.

I’m thinking, I guess, of the way Spike Lee wove the post-9/11 New York into the events of The 25th Hour. That’s probably unfair, because Spike Lee is Spike Lee for a reason, and Reyes, for all the promise he shows, clearly isn’t on Lee’s level. As a writer, he gives just about everyone a helping of boilerplate dialogue at some point. The best actors, like Leguizamo and Keitel, are good enough to make it work. Their less-gifted colleagues … well, let’s just say Reyes’s screenplay didn’t do Wanda De Jesus, in the thankless role of a tough but fair police lieutenant, any favors (sample line: “That’s what cops do: They protect, they serve, and they cover their partners”). And even worse than the Cop Talk 101 stinkers are the long speeches about investigative strategy, where you get the sinking feeling Reyes is using her to tell us everything he doesn’t trust us to figure out on our own.

The movie, Reyes has said in interviews, was a labor of love; it took a decade, from the time he started writing, to get it into theaters. Accordingly, we should probably cut him some slack, because it’s hard to know what compromises he made along the way. Maybe the film’s backers made him overexplain at times; maybe someone else was responsible for the cheesy falling-in-love-with-you montage near the middle: Here are our young lovers at the pizza place; here they are at the movies.

Anyway, if all this feels like nitpicking, it probably is. The awkward moments just got under my skin, because they distracted from all the good things about the movie that make it suspenseful, thought-provoking, emotionally moving, and very much worth seeing.

For one thing, Luis Antonio Ramos, in an incidental part as a drug kingpin, is as natural as De Jesus is stilted — a heartening example of an industrious performer making the most of a throwaway role. When he reminisces about the old neighborhood, about the smell of “welfare meat” sandwiches, he does it with a cool assurance that makes you believe he has been there. Probably not coincidentally, this is some of Reyes’s freshest, truest-sounding dialogue, and the movie would have been better off with more of it.

The main storyline, though, is resonant enough. By the end, Leguizamo’s twins are being wrenchingly pulled apart by events. They argue about revenge, redemption, and the value of life, and the moral area under debate is gray enough that it’s hard to figure out which brother you agree with. When the main characters finally do come together for a moment of reckoning, the ending isn’t neat, and it doesn’t leave you with clear answers. Forgive the vagueness again, but more than one character we’ve grown to care about winds up dead, and the ones who survive are altered. In a movie about the scars of the past and the way violence begets violence through the years, it is the most honest conclusion possible: a reminder that street justice is never clean — it just leaves behind new victims, seeking justice of their own.

Check out our exclusive interview with John Leguizamo: In Part 1, the Ministers star talks about the double jeopardy of playing twins, how director Franc Reyes created the illusion of two brothers with one actor, and how Jeremy Irons’ double duty in the freaky 1991 twins movie Dead Ringers provided inspiration: Read It Now!

In Part 2 of our exclusive interview, Johnny Legs talks about the intensity of co-star Harvey Keitel, acting with Robert De Niro, the historical baggage of playing a Latino with a gun, and how a local maniac in Leguizamo’s 1970s Queens neighborhood helped the actor portray a vivid killer. Read It Now!

Watch the full trailer for The Ministers here!

Related posts on 30ninjas.com:

• Exclusive Interview: John Leguizamo on Working a Bloody Double Shift as Identical Twins in The Ministers (Part 1)
• Exclusive Interview: The Ministers Star John Leguizamo on Co-Star Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, and the Allure of Maniacs (Part 2)
• Exclusive John Leguizamo Interview: Religious Fanaticism in His Family and On-Set Secrets of His Bloody Double Life in The Ministers (Part 3)
• The Ministers Trailer
• Fireballs, Vigilantes, and Righteous Kung Fu: This Weekend’s Explosive New Films
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