Manito sees an everyday tragedy with sadness and tenderness, and doesn t force it into the shape of a plot. At the end, the screen goes dark in the same way a short story might end; there isn t one of those final acts where we learn the meaning of it all. Sometimes in life bad things happen and they just happen. There s nothing you could have done, and no way to fix them, and you are never going to get over the pain.
The movie, a heartfelt debut by writer-director Eric Eason, takes place in Washington Heights, a Latino neighborhood of New York City, where we meet the Moreno family. Junior (Franky G.) runs a plastering and painting crew, and his kid brother Manny (Leo Minaya) is an honor student who is graduating today from high school, and headed to Syracuse on a scholarship.