Navajeros

I recently watched the Eloy de la Iglesia classic from Spain 🇪🇸, Navajeros (1980), on Shudder. The storyline follows a group of Spanish teens in Madrid who survive on the streets by stealing and living a life of crime. The leader of the gang, Jaro, meets a prostitute who loves him and wants him to settle down and live up to his potential. But can Jaro be tamed, or is he destined for the streets?

This film is directed by Eloy de la Iglesia (El pico 1 & 2), and stars José Luis Manzano (El pico 1 & 2), Isela Vega (Barbarosa), Enrique San Francisco (Birdboy: The Forgotten Children), and María Martín (A Candidate for a Killing).

I always enjoy Eloy de la Iglesia's street life and drug-related movies. These are underrated grindhouse cult classics. The acting is top-notch and authentic, and there are some beautiful ladies with plenty of nudity. The flow of the story is unique, blending street fights, gang activity, drug dealing, robbery, and sex. There's a hilarious monkey scene, a fun park fight, and a butt stab that had me laughing. The creativity in the fight sequences is impressive, and the ending is magnificent and very well done.

In conclusion, Navajeros is an elite street culture film that's an absolute must-see. I would score this an 8/10.

I really enjoyed this time capsule. The story is pretty straight forward and has several different themes but what fascinates me is the political relevance it has to today's social issues. Kind of sad but never misses beat. Keeps your attention all through.

Veronica Castro was probably very happy to go to Spain to make this movie, but her role is shadowed by the intense and tormented affair between another intense actress Isela Vega and the male leading "El Jaro". The movie doesn't have much of a plot. But is a good vehicle to show sex, drugs and nudity every time possible. Maybe that's why Ms Vega agreed to do it, because there was a time where she was naked in everything she appeared. Required by the script or not. The director, Eloy de la Iglesia, had his own story, because is well known that he would go looking for street kids to make starts out of them. After this movie, where Manzano ''el jaro'' debuted, more in the same style followed, including COLEGAS, where two kids of the late Lola Flores also starred. Manzano was a troublemaker in real life (just like in his movies) and that was what lost him, because getting in and out of jail often, is not a good sign.

Maybe De La Iglesia was not the best director of his generation, he wasn't neither the most technical nor the most elegant , but he dared to portray a certain time in the history of Spain that was not easy at all. Heroin, small time thieves, delinquency...

Time has had no mercy with movies such as "Navajeros", everything looks out of date, but it's a nice document of the situation of this country. Now everybody thinks that Spain is so modern and so free, but the story that De La Iglesia told in this movie occurred less than 30 years ago...

*My rate: 6/10

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Amazing film, which can combine a thrilling story with an incredibly accurate social picture of life in Madrid in the 1970's, along with an intelligent insight of the socially marginated, as "Jaro" is represented to be. Great dialogue parts and unforgettable characters as "Jaro", "el nene", or "el Marqués". No one should miss it.