Simmer

Chef Hernandez (Marsuvio Sanchez ) takes a job for William Faust (Richard Keep) at an upscale restaurant. He is legal, but his brother and parents are not. ICE is coming to his neighborhood. Chef needs $60,000 to keep them in the country, something I didn't know you could do. Faust offers Chef and after hours job delivering vehicles with questionable trunk content. Seriously. If someone offers your $20,000 to drive a car across town, you should know there is something illegal about it. Shut up and never look in the trunk. Richard Keep had that "Hans Gruber" feel to him. I really never knew Chef as he speaks Spanish half the time. This is a low action low thrills, action-thriller. Guide: No swearing, sex, or nudity.

The acting is stilted, the lead specially has a weird way to show emotions. The music is really over the top with trying to make things tense, like for example at the beginning abuelita gives the lead a knife as a present and the music is full-on dramatic for some reason. It tries too hard with the neon look and the synth is just much worse than Drive. Plot was predictable, not sure how the lead didn't see it coming when everyone watching did.

I am SOOO incredibly biased here. I only started and finished this movie because the lead (Marsuvio Sánchez as "Chef") was so flipping hot. And it didn't help that he's in practically, if not ALL, scenes. But...the negatives were a little overwhelming. The plot is so incredibly simplistic and predictable and at one point, I thought this was a Christian-based movie due to actual prayer/prayer time in the movie. Which, to be fair, most Christian-based movies use extremely toned-down scripts and have enormously predictable and stereotypical plots. But, that said, I wouldn't have been opposed to this being a Christian-based film and it would make sense due to the very obvious premise: A very good-hearted chef named Chef needs work and is given his dream-job despite his boss being so shady, he could be an albino. On his first day, the government magically allows illegal immigrants to stay in the country for a $20,000 fee and Chef's Mom and Grandparents who stay with him may be deported unless Chef can cough up sixty grand. Luckily, Chef's boss has the loot and a side "could it possibly be illegal?" car transporting gig. Chef has to decide if he should do the right thing or... I really should've hated this movie and I almost turned it off about half-way through. The acting is so wooden, the cooks barely cook, the dialogue and actions are very foretold, you can usually guess what the characters are about to say. BUUUUT...Damn you, Simmer, for making the lead so irresistible. LOL. Okay, I didn't just award this 5/10 stars for the lead. The movie's heart is in the right place and it's a nice story of people conflicted with their own morals. Plus, I LOVED the ending twist. It was probably a bit predictable as well, but I think I just gave up at that point guessing three scenes ahead. Honestly, because of the message, the actors giving their all and obvious amateur filmmakers' real, and successful, attempt at making the movie look like a big budget, Hollywood film, I would recommend it. I admire movies and filmmakers like these EVEN when the movie was written so substandardly. *** Final Thoughts: My alternative headline was "Simmer Down, Steve." And no, I didn't throughout this whole movie.

I saw "Simmer" on YouTube 2 months ago -- I thought it was as good as any of Hitchcock's early movies. Bad guys were truly evil, and protagonist was clearly naive. And, the film dealt maturely with social issues of the day, and the villain got it with a true "surprise" ending. Even though I know one of the film-makers, I think I'm be fairly impartial. "Simmer" is a good film!!

The acting is stilted, the lead specially has a weird way to show emotions. The music is really over the top with trying to make things tense, like for example at the beginning abuelita gives the lead a knife as a present and the music is full-on dramatic for some reason. It tries too hard with the neon look and the synth is just much worse than Drive. Plot was predictable, not sure how the lead didn't see it coming when everyone watching did.