La soga

I just saw La Soga (The Butcher's Son). It's by far the best film made in the Dominican Republic over the last 20 years (One-way Ticket, made in the 80s was also very good). Not a cheap extended sketch or an episode from a bad soap opera. It's excellent. You can't miss this movie. It would be difficult to find someone not affected profoundly by it, after watching it. Other Dominican "filmmakers" should take it as a model to learn how to shoot a good movie. This one shows it's possible to make good movies with low budget. It is much better than most Hollywood movies we commonly see in theaters. Here you never know what will happen next. It reminds us the film City of God that we saw a few years ago. There is never a dull moment. From beginning to end, the film fills us with different emotions. There is action, suspense, comedy, romance ... It's been a long time since we felt this good watching a film. This is one of the reasons why we love movies so much, but good ones.

LA SOGA (dir. Josh Crook) The film concerns government corruption in the Dominican Republic and Manny Perez plays Luisito (he also wrote the screenplay), the morally conflicted enforcer for a corrupt Dominican general who is illegally monitoring the island's criminal element. The central premise of the film is that it is easier and cheaper for US authorities to deport criminals back to the Dominican Republic rather than to try them in American courts, and this influx of criminality is threatening to destabilize the Dominican government. However, Luisito's boss gives the criminals an opportunity to buy back their freedom regardless of the ruthlessness of their crimes. Luisito's moral dilemma might be a bit cloying, but the action sequences shot in the barrios of Santiago are fairly riveting.

The story is about a cop works against his country's corrupt government in order to find justice on a case. "La Soga" is set in the neighborhoods of the Dominican Republic and Washington Heights, New York. This Dominican film has good production values for a low budget and delivers good acting from the main characters and most of the cast. Another point in favor is that the movie flows in a good pace BUT the story feels empty, cliché with flaws and lack of depth to make the viewer feels what is told. "La Soga" is entertaining but uninteresting piece of Dominican cinema. At the end La Soga (rope) didn't tie me up hard.

If you like the genre, you will like this movie: it covers all the tropes of the drug and revenge movie. We have childhood trauma, cops gone bad, action, desire for revenge and drug dealers. The actin's is good and the script does it's job.

La Soga is great. A believable, well-acted assassin (tough, but sensitive) who is beginning to doubt the motives behind his orders from the corrupt General, makes a great story, and unravels well with the revenge story about Luisito (La Soga)trying to find his father's murderer. It is beautifully shot in the DR and Washington Heights, has a very fitting score, wonderful acting by a Dominican cast. The revenge story, and love story, keep you watching. The action is excellent, and the view of gritty drug lords and corrupt government counterparts is the stuff movies are made of. The father and son story is touching, and echoed throughout. The visceral reminder of how human-human violence is akin to (but clearly not the same as) human-livestock 'violence' (ie. butcher references) was obvious, but poetic nonetheless. I loved it.