Hollywood's Latest Foray With Urban Planning

"An urban drama about liberal complacency meeting its match, The Architect places [actress Viola] Davis front and center as Tonya Neeley, a community activist on Chicago's South Side who's trying to gather enough signatures to get her ratty housing project torn down and rebuilt. Degraded by poverty, unemployment, and social collapse, the locals range from indifferent to hostile, while drug-dealing gangbangers who treat the neighborhood as their corporate headquarters menace Tonya with direct threats. Desperate for help, she shows up in the college classroom of Leo Waters (the excellent Anthony LaPaglia), the distinguished architect who designed the projects back in the idealistic '60s, and asks him to sign her petition."