Perro come perro

When the ending titles of "Perro come perro" came out, movies like "The Long Good Friday", "Once upon a time in America" and "Cidade de deus" came to my mind. This film is made with the same artistry, the same dark humor and specially with the same approach to criminal life.

Great character development, accomplished cinematography and a clear understanding of the Cali underworld are some of the qualities this movie brings to the viewer.

This movie is for Cali what "Snatch" was for London and it works so well.

Of course there are some flaws, but this movie is such and acomplishment that you can let them go.

A breath of fresh air for Colombian Cinema and the "Dago-Formula" that comes every year.

My deepest congratulations to the crew of "PCP", you've made a mark in Colombian Cinema History.

This is an accurate while though portrait of crime underworld in Cali (second biggest Colombian city), plenty of a dark sense of humor and local culture elements such as witchery, drug traffic, poverty, and a very interesting atmosphere of salsa and African American music.

It is remarkable the photography direction, specially the coloring and texture of all movie, which emphasizes the feeling of permanent heat (Cali is a tropical place). Oh, and the FX work is very convincing. If you have a lot of gunshots, you will need a lot of fake blood, right? Well, in this film every gun fire sequence is very well played without making you get out of focus of main plot.

Main characters are played in a very convincing way with a very local taste, but in the end of the film you get the feeling of having witnessed events that could happen at the darkest corners of any city in the world.

I recently saw this at the 2009 Palm Springs International Film Festival. This was Columbia's official submission for consideration in Best Foreign film to the Academy Awards. This is also the debut film of writer/director Carlos Moreno and he offers up a dark crime drama mixed with dark comedy in this film set in infamous drug cartel city of Cali. victor (Marlon Moreno) and Eusedio (Oscar Borda) are two low level criminals, one who has stolen a bag of his bosses drug money and the other who has killed the bosses godson. The consequences of their actions drive the darkly witty plot with lots of twists, turns and gruesome killings. It's a fast paced script from director Moreno along with Alonso Torres and colorful cinematography by Juan Carlos Gil. Still it's a typical blood and guts mob movie about greed and betrayal but it does have several interesting characters and some strange comedy like a Quentin Tarantino might have. I would give it a 7.0 out of 10.

This sun-baked slice of nihilism from Colombia is a very interesting watch indeed. Although there's plenty of yelling and gun-waving, there's also a very ominous feeling about the whole show. Marlon Moreno definitely has presence as the lead, Victor, who must deal with family problems and tries to solve it by stealing money from a dead lackey belonging to his big boss, a snarlingly fun Blas Jaramillo. Holed up in a hotel room with fellow gangster Eusebio (Oscar Borda) Victor waits for the order to find and kill whoever stole the money (himself) and keeps receiving crazy phone calls from a half-mad man looking for a woman named Adela. If this all sounds like fun to you, it is. On top of all that, Eusebio may or may not be "cursed" by a dead man or just going bugnuts crazy. Yes, there's something for everyone here. The only drawback I can think of is it feels a tad too short and a few of the lead characters aren't fleshed out enough to truly care for them when the screws are really put to them. There's plenty of style, however, and you'll being humming the title theme long after it's over.

The most amazing about this marvel is that you will hardly find any information about Carlos Moreno in Internet. The directing of this Colombian gangster drama is impeccable. As cruel and cynical as Tarantino's and Rodrigues' artificial works, it's based on real Cali life. And it's deeply moralistic, despite all its cruelty. The movie boasts with at least four brilliant acting performances, each of them worth festivals' laurels. Charismatic Marlon Moreno acts unforgettably with glances and silent pauses, being responsible for the dramatic tension throughout the movie. Multifaced Alvaro Rodriguez deserves the Best Supporting Actor award at any festival. But the truly brilliant is Blas Jaramillo ("El Orejón"), a theatrical actor from Bogotá, who wasn't able to see the final cut, having left this world because of pancreatitis and peritonitis in his 39.

No dog-suffering scenes.