Off Jackson Avenue (2008)

63% of critics liked it
(16 reviews)
73% of users liked it
(3,807 ratings)

The fates of a Mexican woman sold into sexual slavery, a car thief seeking to go straight, and a Japanese assassin converge on the streets of New York City in director John-Luke Montias' complex crime drama. Lured to New York from Mexico with the promise of a stable restaurant job, Olivia (Jessica… More The fates of a Mexican woman sold into sexual slavery, a car thief seeking to go straight, and a Japanese assassin converge on the streets of New York City in director John-Luke Montias' complex crime drama. Lured to New York from Mexico with the promise of a stable restaurant job, Olivia (Jessica Pimentel) finds herself imprisoned in an inner-city bordello and forced into prostitution. She's under the thumb of Albanian pimp Milot (Stivi Paskoski), who has recently dethroned a Chinese mob boss named Eddie Chang (Clem Cheung). Chang is none too pleased to see Milot encroaching on his business, and hires Japanese hitman Tomo (Jun Suenaga) to take care of the competition. Meanwhile, gullible car thief Joey (Montias) bickers with his uncle Jack (Gene Ruffini) about the best way to go legit, and Olivia finds herself in hot water after attacking her latest john, a crooked cop, in a moment of unbridled rage. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 19 min.
Directed By: John-Luke Montias
Written By: John-Luke Montias
Genres: Mystery & Suspense, Drama

In Theaters: Jul 17, 2009 Wide
Studio: Goltzius Productions

Critic Reviews

Ronnie Scheib, Variety
Its laid-back absurdist tone and no-nonsense pacing make for an audio-visual delight.
Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News
A nicely done first feature from writer-director John-Luke Montias, Off Jackson Avenue has a rich sense of place and enough confidence in its story that it doesn't need to have its characters collide, Crash-style, until they have to.
V.A. Musetto, New York Post
If there really are 8 million stories in the naked city, you'd think that writer-director John-Luke Montias would have come up with more convincing scenarios for his Queens-based movie Off Jackson Avenue.
Stephen Holden, New York Times
Not the first movie to follow a victim of sex trafficking into a living nightmare.
Elena Oumano, Village Voice
Amusingly improbable.
Jules Brenner, Cinema Signals
Count me in for this filmmaker's next offering. I detect a burgeoning talent here.
Ron Wilkinson, Monsters and Critics
Gritty inner city drama with a message presented by new names and faces makes a great film.
Avi Offer, NYC Movie Guru
Mildly engaging, but often contrived and dull with stilted dialogue that lacks much-needed pizzazz.
Prairie Miller, NewsBlaze
An urban wasteland gritty slice of life dramatic collision of a seriously hallucinating multinational Japanese hitman, bottom feeder car thieves, and a Long Island City immigrant sex slave uprising.
Matthew Nestel, Boxoffice Magazine
So pressed to push plot, the filmmaker deserts little (big) things, like location attributes and character quirks. Much of the fodder is slippery pastiche, winking flirtations at elders who do gangster capers better and bolder.
Cynthia Fuchs, PopMatters
In Off Jackson Avenue, Olivia is gutsy, shrewd, and fed up in a way that makes her look ripe for a Quentin Tarantino movie.
Ethan Alter, Film Journal International
This indie drama deserves points for effort, but the movie's micro-budget is often difficult to ignore.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice
A well-constructed crime drama in which three characters find themselves in tight squeezes and try to squirm free.
Andrew Grant, Time Out New York
Like a less didactic version of Crash, John-Luke Montias's multiculti, multithreaded drama forces a handful of disparate characters to converge for no purpose other than narrative closure.
Andrew Schenker, Slant Magazine
Sex slavery, Japanese hit men, and ordinary car thieves converge on the mean streets of Long Island City in Off Jackson Avenue, John-Luke Montias's engagingly lurid but ultimately tepid crime drama.
Mark R. Leeper, rec.arts.movies.reviews
It builds to a satisfying and almost funny denouement with a cleverly intricate sequence involving all of the primary characters of the plot.