Barrio Angelz

Although this movie is listed as action or Latina action, it actually reminds me quite a bit of the Film Noir films of the 40's and 50's, with gangsters updated with gangsta's and your classic femme-fatal updated with the Angelz in a gritty, urban backdrop quintessential for those film noir films. Don't get me wrong, this isn't an imitation of those Film Noir films, it IS a Film Noir film, just made 50 years later. Like its 1950's predecessors, it was apparently made with a low budget, but with a story like this (or those of the 50's) you don't really need to have a budget as long as you have a good story line, and this one does. It reminds me somewhat of the movie "Heat" in that about halfway through you suddenly realize that you're hoping the bad guy (or in this case, girls) wins. The film has an almost documentary like quality to it, much like "Traffic." Many (if not most) of the shots are hand-held and it seems like the action was "captured" rather than staged. This is certain death for most low budget films, but this one pulls it off, and does it quite well. Why? Because the gangstas and drug-dealers look and and and sound and feel like real gangstas and drug-dealers - the graffiti on the walls is real, the dialogue is real, and the plot is real. Don't let the cover and title mislead you into believing this is a film like a lot of the "Latino action" flicks that aren't very good at all ("Wrong Casa" comes to mind...)quite the contrary; its a good action/crime-drama film with a mostly Hispanic cast.