A Mina de Ouro

To like a film like this, you have to like two things: Lou Diamond Phillips, and noir. This interesting piece of neo noir is very satisfying for those who like to watch something unfold slowly and try to figure out who is conning who.

Manny (Lou Diamond Phillips, whom I have liked since La Bamba), is a slow, maybe Autistic, desk clerk in a sleazy hotel. He has just been released from an institution for the criminally insane for a murder he committed. He seems to be getting along well on his medication and appears to be a happy joe.

Then all kinds of people start coming into his life: Popcorn (Bruce Weitz) with his gold mine, Jack (Glenn Plummer) the junkie with a hot girlfriend (Tracy Middendorf), and a cop (James McDaniel) who is making life tough for him.

Who among this strange collection is conning whom. What is everyone's motivation? Who is aligned with whom? These are questions that get answered slowly as Manny is drawn into this nightmare.

You have to figure that Manny will manage to come out OK, he just has to. But, will he? And, who will be there with him? Ah, it was satisfying unraveling this puzzle, which kept you guessing until the end.

El Cortez is a film that presents Lou Diamond Phillips in an unusual character, an autistic soul who as most of them has an inability to relate to his surroundings. He reacted violently to one such situation and spent some time in a mental institution. Since his release he now has a menial job as a desk clerk in a fleabag hotel in Reno, Nevada named the El Cortez.

Being he's Lou Diamond Phillips he arouses the interest in Tracy Middendorf who is the girl friend of drug dealer Glenn Plummer. Plummer is the jealous type and only through some murky flashbacks do we get a hint that maybe the Lou we see is someone who can handle the situation if the need arises. Lou also has his arresting officer James McDaniel interested as well. McDaniel never believed in that 'not guilty by reason of insanity or mental defect' crap that got Phillips off. If he can't get him behind bars then he'll harass him so that Phillips will be his snitch.

But the worst of it for him might just be Bruce Weitz who is a paraplegic staying at the hotel whom Lou saves from some muggers. Turns out that Weitz is a con man and he's got some kind of gold mine scheme working on a mark played by Peter Onorati.

All these plot elements come together and it's interesting to see how it all works out.

El Cortez is a kind of poor man's Forrest Gump where Lou Diamond Phillips is hardly a fringe player in great events of our time the way Tom Hanks was. The film itself is a minor effort, but what Lou Diamond Phillips does with the character is fascinating. El Cortez is definitely for his legion of fans of which I am one.

Neither really a thriller, or mystery, nor clever enough in its plot, twists, or script El Cortez is a pleasant enough diversion but lacks any real distinction.

The plot is nothing you haven't seen before, the characters are OK, but really below par. The fault may lie with Lou Diamond Philips. He is not a character actor in the mould of Edward Norton and the way he plays Manny is too off-balance for the material. The fact that he plays the ex-com hotel desk clerk like Edward Norton would have just doesn't ring true somehow.

The rest of the cast are good, especially James McDaniel as the cop, but the material is somehow flat. The real fault lies in the way it is shot: too light, and bright. I would have liked the lighting and shooting to have been less TV movie mode and more film noir: more shadows, and less claustrophobic. I felt Stephen Purvis wanted it to be a small tale, which is right, but would have liked to have built more atmosphere. A soundtrack would have helped enormously.

There is nothing spectacularly wrong with El Cortez it just is what it is: a small theatrical thriller that would work well as a stage piece and fails to translate its convictions and menace to film.

Overall, worth watching if you like the genre, but don't expect too much.

Pretty good actors; pretty good acting; TERRIBLE writing, and a story that is incredibly improbable (make that ludicrously impossible).

What? We were supposed to believe that all these characters just HAPPENED to be in the same place at the same time, and acted so implausibly? There's more logic in a David Lynch movie! And what's with the moral values? It's OK to kill people serially (multiple bodies in the mine, not to mention the cop and the drug dealer) to perpetrate a scam repeatedly -- because the dead people may be crooks, too? "Oh well, as long as EVERYBODY gets hurt." This was a truly bad movie (even though with actors I like -- shame on you Bruce and Lou or Diamond, or Lou Diamond, or whatever you go by!).

I saw this film while on vacation this summer. It was late at night and I didn't feel like sleeping, so I tuned on. To my surprise, there was Lou Diamond Phillips, an actor I always liked, playing a very uncharacteristic part of a hotel clerk who had psychological issues. There were quite a few hot scenes involving Lou and his smoking hot partner. The "love triangle" was also interesting, but Glenn Plummer's character was so loathsome that I couldn't wait for him to be whacked.

I think this was a rather enjoyable film, there was lots of suspense and acting was solid. Phillips has never given a bad performance, despite not being fully appreciated as a drama actor. Here he is very solid and proves his range as actor. There was some violence here as well, but none of it is overwhelming. The plot kinda pulls you in and makes you follow it to the end. Not a great film, but a rather good one. 7 stars.