Movie review: ‘Lila & Eve’

A strong performance can often salvage a subpar movie. That’s exactly the case with Lila & Eve, a revenge thriller nearly rescued by an often heart-wrenching turn by Viola Davis.

Davis is Lila, a single, working Atlanta mom with two boys to raise. When her older son, Stephon (Aml Ameen), is gunned down accidentally in a drive-by, she wants more than the sob-sister camaraderie of the moms’ support group she joins. She wants justice, and she finds it in another grief-stricken mom, Eve (Jennifer Lopez in dressed-down, around-the-way-girl mode), whose young daughter was murdered.

When the cops don’t seem to be particularly interested in finding the truth, Lila and Eve channel their inner Charles Bronson and decide to take on the responsible drug kingpin themselves.

Now, for Lila & Eve to work, a viewer would have to believe that either these two moms were secret gun and explosives experts or that both the Atlanta cops and its gangsters are the most incompetent in the country. Not to mention that when the big surprise is revealed in the third act, the whole thing tips over into fantasyland.

But when Davis has the screen to herself — or is comforting her remaining son or returning the affections of the older man next door (Julius Tennon) — her grief hangs heavy like lead and we can feel every pound.

Exclusive: Look Cinemas, Dallas; video-on-demand

This story was originally published July 16, 2015 at 7:57 AM with the headline "Movie review: ‘Lila & Eve’."