Along with Steven Spielberg, The Coen Brothers, and Wes Anderson, Jim McKay is among a few American directors whose announcements of new works genuinely excite me. As can be seen from films such as Everyday People (2004) and Girls Town (1996), McKay is one of the most politically conscious if not the most politically conscious of the most humanist of American filmmakers. It is odd, for such a white straight man to be making movies about the disaffected urban population, but his position never devolves into liberal guilt but rather true compassion and understanding for the humanity behind what for some is reduced to "issues." To an extent, he is the white version of Charles Burnett, brining reality and complexity into lives existences that have been politicized but not necessarily humanized. It is unfortunate that his only enthusiastic commercial backing is HBO, and that most of his films rarely get any wide audience in the big screen, if at all. Although Angel Rodriguez lacks the power of both aforementioned films by McKay, it still stands on its own as a study of adolescent rebellion and the youthful need for recognition. Although it is a story of urban youth telling their own stories, it isn't as simplistic as Freedom Writers (2007), which never acknowledged the audience to which the stories are told, or the inherent privilege behind the act of listening and/or not listening. In Angel Rodriguez, lives are affirmed to the self, and thus the films never becomes stale and settles for "stories told," but for lives lived and futures pursued.
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