ciffou

I've read that this movie was kind of expensive to make but man...it doesn't show at all. I think the actors are doing their best with a pretty basic script, but the production is just bad.

It's not the VHS resource - Gregg Araki's work still looks interesting today. It's the editing, the cheesy close-ups and everything that goes by the numbers: even the antagonist has no redeemable qualities. Tovey is the highlight - he elevates the material with his performance but there's just so much he can do. It's not a terrible movie but I needed to bring some objectivity to the reviews posted so far..

I know about the quinqui cinema and I have just watched "navajeros", "colegas", and then this one. In that order.

Regardless of the undeniably exploitative relationship that Eloy had with Jose Luis Manzano (due to both his position and age), I am only going to focus on his work. Having watched those three I can tell he fell in love with the subject and ran with it, but by this movie, he was also running out of energy and passion.

De la Iglesia obviously had more resources 3 years after "Navajeros", maybe because of that he felt that he needed to do more and drag this longer than necessary.

It feels like this movie should have ended with an open end by the time the guys are in the presence of the drug after being clean. Evaristo's disenchantment and doubts were already clear. The second part of the movie is more about the parents but we don't even get to know enough of Martin Aramendía, besides his affiliation.

I see that people talk about its "realistic portrayal". If we're talking about youth's problems and drug use, he had already done that before and far more effectively without a character explicitly telling us how he had changed throughout. I think some might have a more romantic perspective of the film due to its portrayal of ETA (for a second), the socialist party and the civil guard. I think the movie suffers due to its shifting focus. If it had focused mostly on fleshing out both parents and developing their relationship, I think we would have had a far superior movie. However, it is not just that, but the youth drama of any of his previous films plus many melodramatic and corny resources that made this the less enjoyable of the three films - the portrait of the dying mom was such a laughable scene.

Since he had already shown pubes, full frontals and gore before, this time De La Iglesia focused on the injections. I don't find the needles shocking but sad - I assume he let them get high on film. He would have done so but again, I don't want to talk about how these kids' realities and needs were exploitated by the admired director. Yet it seems I cannot.

The movie is not as terrible as people make it sound. The ending is terrible and it belongs to a "very special episode" from the 80s, but overall the movie is entertaining if you don't pay attention to how dumb adults seem to be and if you are prepared to moustache-twirling villains.

I also need to give kudos to denny321 who manages to trash the movie while sharing some casual (internalized?) homophobia of his own describing "queenish" looks vs the "butch" main actor and also some racism while talking about Guatemala and Iran. Let's hope all of us in Central America get to be as enlightened as you are, especially on this forums.