Sierra Madre: Prohibido Pasar

Sierra Madre tells the story of two towns in Mexico. Neighbors but as different as night and day. One is the luxurious enclave of the wealthiest Mexican family, the Parras, and the other home to squalor and the violence of the drug trade. Fueled by money from the first.

It's difficult for me to believe that more people haven't watched this show. Yes, it's subtitled and there are a lot of characters that make following the plot somewhat tricky.

That being said, the story, the acting, and particularly the cinematography is all outstanding. I've never seen better use of camera angles, blocking, framing, and every other aspect of the art. Whoever is in charge here went to film school and they learned.

Every scene has multiple angles, wide shots, closeups, background activity. This sort of detail is not easy and why we don't see it often. It requires multiple takes from different angles, lighting, continuity. It's all brilliantly done.

If you are a budding filmmaker, you must watch this series.

The plot is somewhat confusing, no doubt about that. The story lines with the younger actors are the least effective. The main story is excellent and the contrast between the two towns, the two cultures, the rich and the poor is illustrated fantastically.

The acting is all good. I believe the various characters.

I really urge anyone to give this show a chance. Get past the first few episodes when the subtitles and complicated story make it difficult to follow.

You won't regret it.

The show depicts the life of many kinds of people; politics, journalists and members of the cartels.

It does a good job of portraying how these systems interact with each other, just like The Wire did (but isn't as great as the wire, dont get me mistaken)

It's focusing mainly on how one man decides to become a politic instead of being the CEO of a bigger company his dad owned. And how he needs to deal with all kinds of people, good or bad.

Acting is good, i don't remember much of the cinematography or soundtrack because i saw this years ago but i wouldn't complain about it.

Do yourself a favor and DO NOT watch this with English dub, this has to be seen in it's original language for a better experience. (English Dub lacks the punch and flavor actor put in the dialogues, HORRIBLE)

The only thing of redeeming value regarding this series were the acting and the cinematography. Other than that, all of the characters and all the plot lines, just made it too confusing to really be engaging. The reason it was so confusing is because there was no buildup (intro) in many cases, to who characters were, which was also true, of the actual plot lines.

I am bilingual, and I did watch the whole series. I also appreciated the prior lengthy review of the series, that cited all of the beautiful film techniques this series used. And in fact, the only reason why I watched the whole series, was because I trusted this review. However, because I am not a student of film, I couldn't even begin to learn to see what these techniques were, because of all the confusion regarding who characters were in the various plot lines. So for me, this series was definitely a waste of time.