In New York, in a morning close to Christmas, an upper class father and mother go in their BMW to a private school to see the play of their daughter. Then they go shopping and later they return to their fancy apartment in Manhattan. In the night, they move to a simple apartment in a dangerous neighborhood, where they prepare drugs for distribution. On the Christmas Eve, while buying the Christmas gift for their daughter, the father is kidnapped, and his wife desperately tries to raise a high amount of money to pay the requested ransom. "R Xmas" is a deceptive movie of Abel Ferrara. The lead characters do not have names, are anonymous, and maybe his intention is to tell that in the breast of a neighbor family in your building may have drug dealers; or that drug dealers may also have families and may be loving persons; or that there are many dirty cops, probably worse than the criminals; or is it a simple apology to crime? Whatever! However, this humanization of criminals is a horrible message, and I really did not like this movie. In Brazil, for example, many drug dealers and criminals help their communities, due to the absence of the State in poor areas and slums, but this procedure does not make them model citizen. In this movie, we see a loving upper class family in the day, providing drugs as means of living, but the destruction of the members of other families is not shown in the story, and it is impossible to feel sympathy for any characters. In the end, I wished all of them dead. My vote is four.Title (Brazil): "Gangues do Gueto" ("Gangs of the Ghetto")

The whole movie was done half-assed. It could have been a much better movie but, that would have required a re-write and different actors. Compared to "Traffic" this was a wreck. I am just glad I didn't have to pay for it.Spoiler:What was the point of having crooked cops getting arrested? To share the guilt of drug dealers and make them feel better? Pu-leaze! The parents were scum, driven by greed, and didn't even consider the harm they were doing; as pointed out by Ice-T. 2 out of 10

An un-named upscale New York couple (BRONX TALE's Lillo Brancato and SOPRANOS regular Drea de Matteo) are loving parents, who by day, go Christmas shopping for their beloved little girl, Lisa (Lisa Valens). At night, they don street clothes, head for the unfriendly reaches of the Bronx to deal in heroine with dangerous co-workers and drug rivals. The wife learns from a kidnapper (Ice-T) that her husband has been taken. The ransom is due within an almost impossible time limit. ‘R XMAS is free of the drug-movie cliches. Gunplay is at a bare minimum (The only bullet recipient in 'R XMAS is a basketball!) There are no expected car chases (When the wife drives across town for ransom money, she isn't running red lights and knocking over fruit stands, like every rescuer in most other genre film) ‘R XMAS is filled with insight, a peek into the inner workings of drug neighborhoods highlighted with wall graffiti.

This is without doubt Ferrara's finest film ; mature, restrained, utterly believable. Perhaps that's what the simple-minded don't like about it: it contains no simplified stereotypes - the drug-dealers in it are not necessarily reprehensible louts and thugs - no cliches, no spectacular car chases, no blood and brains spattering the walls... but, you no what? neither does real life. And real life, or an awfully damned good facsimile thereof, is what we get in R-Xmas. Above all, we get award-quality performances from two hitherto actors of tremendous ability, Drea de Matteo and Lillo Brancato, and a warm, empathetic portrayal of New York's Dominican community. Ice-T is superb as a brutal and menacing kidnapper. This film poses all kinds of difficult questions : are wealthy drug-dealers really that different from other successful businessmen? How *do* they bring up their children in an environment of relative normalcy? how does a man react when he is brutalized by a gang of thugs and - since this is not a facile Hollywood fantasy - the possibility of going back and blowing them all away with a magnum simpy does not exist ? Ferrara's latest film is a more-believable _Godfather_ for the 21st century. In the end the film belongs to the astonishing Drea de Matteo. Reminding one in turn of Sharon Stone and Robin Penn, she gives a terrific performance as a complex, tough woman whose main concerns are the well-being of her husband and daughter. In short, just a terrific film. What can one say about reviewers who complain the film is "frustratingly incomplete", when the film itself states explicitly that it is only the first part of a series? There are plenty of empty-headed shoot-em-ups out there if what they want are quick, cheap thrills that don't make them think. Or perhaps they took a wrong turn at the Cineplex, and thought they were watching "Lord of the Ring"? A final word: the French translation of this film, especially the Spanish dialogue, is lamentably poor, and that's a shame, since it's so rich and colorful.