Director Jose Luis Torres II built City of Honor as a scrappy, street-level alternative to the big-network cop drama, and with City of Honor 2: Choices, he dives into the mess of corruption, addiction, and broken trust.
City of Honor 2: Choices picks up with the detectives of the West End Task Force from the original City of Honor. Our team is still juggling city crime with the messes going on in their personal lives. Detective Sergeant Dante Perez (Jose Luis Torres II) is at the center of this mess. As the case brings him closer to a drug ring operating throughout the city and the corruption that protects it, Perez and crew will soon face a tough choice.
That puts ADA Gabrielle Asante (Danielle Harper) in a rough spot. If she wants to prosecute the corruption, she may have to go after the people who run her department. It might cost her the job, but not her integrity. Meanwhile, Detective Tara Smith (Tara London) is climbing the ranks fast and has a promotion in her sights, but her personal life is fraying. Her mother, recovering from a recent accident, has developed a painkiller addiction and started breaking rules to keep getting her next fix. On top of the drug ring, a serial rapist is loose in the city, and the task force gets pulled onto that case too.
As our team closes in on the drug lord, the pressure mounts, and our heroes begin to put themselves in greater and greater danger. This pressure soon spills beyond the badge and into their personal lives.
Gabrielle Asante (Danielle Harper) in a tense conversation in City of Honor 2: Choices.
“On top of the drug ring, a serial rapist is loose in the city, and the task force gets pulled onto that case too.”
The joy of City of Honor 2: Choices is how much confidence indie filmmakers and emerging actors bring to a genre dominated by the big networks. This is a cop drama running on a shoestring budget, with actors still getting their chops in, and a plot that isn’t overcomplicated, nor does it make you question what side to root for. There are still good cops out there.
The show’s real strength is its stories. City of Honor 2 doesn’t shy away from the issues facing urban cities—addiction, abuse, corruption. While the small sub-plots in this film are resolved, there’s still a bigger problem that’s clearly building toward Part Three. Can our heroes hold on to their integrity and expose the villainy before the corrupt politics take out the innocent detectives standing in the way?
Obviously, money is the reason City of Honor stays “local” in its actions. Don’t expect car chases or gunfire lighting up this episode. What you get is the human drama with a dash of brutality: ruthless drug lords in backroom torture chambers, an undercover operation that goes bad fast, and another that looks like it goes right but turns out to be wrong. City of Honor 2 is about good people trying to do right by the city’s citizens, but running into bullies who won’t get out of the way. It’s that tension that will carry this series into its next iteration.
"…The show's real strength is its stories."
