Avis Metacritic

A bombshell in its home country, Herod's Law is made with the kind of flair that ensures a following everywhere politicians are venal and voters hope against hope for deliverance.

Incisive, highly entertaining political farce.

Provocative, well-shot and vastly entertaining in its malice.

A bracingly sarcastic political comedy -- it opens on a bound copy of Mexico's Constitution, stuffed with cash -- possessed of a baleful satiric eye for hypocrisy and greed, a delicious anti-clerical bent, and pitch-perfect comic timing.

Smart, sassy and much more fun than most political diatribes.

Estrada can be faulted for not fully developing these supporting characters, or for not weaving them seamlessly into his story. His eye all along is so clearly and surely on The Point that at times plot details and peripheral performances are washed over.

Estrada references Welles throughout with his low-angle deep-focus shots, grotesque close-ups, and brassy sound track. The actors are uniformly excellent, embracing their arch roles without succumbing to caricature.

The film is bold and passionate, but not subtle, and that is its downfall.

The angrier the film gets, the less funny it becomes, squelched by heavy-handed polemics, a maddeningly repetitive musical score, and a running time that drags its overriding joke into the ground.

It’s too didactic to be a spaghetti Western but lacks the moral compass required of a more evolved philosophical statement.