Caliann

BLAZE YOU OUT is a handsome first feature by directors Mateo Frazier and Diego Joaquin Lopez and their talented cast and crew. Set in northern New Mexico, the film is a masterful tapestry of stunning landscapes and human drama. Life would be normal in this Latino and Native American town except for the evil - a cunning drug-dealing matriarch (Elizabeth Pena) and her seductively twisted son, Whitey (brilliantly portrayed by Mark Adair-Rios). But they go too far when Whitey doggedly pursues Alicia (Melissa Cordero), a witness to one of his murders. With ferocious determination, Alicia's sister, Lupe (portrayed by the talented Veronica Diaz-Carranza) recruits her friends who invoke their own courage and mystical forces to save themselves and their cultures from extinction. Superb cinematography and editing, visually rich lighting -- huge production value. Well done.

I saw the film at Sundance as part of a packed house for a third or fourth screening. I've seen the story of Nanking depicted before but never with the confidence I had that this was how it really was. It was like watching three Shindlers save the Chinese, and Spielberg's Shoa, all rolled into one perfect film. A panel of actors speak the lines from letters and diaries of European/American witnesses and Chinese and Japanese survivors tell their stories themselves on film. It's not just a narrator interpreting the events - it's the voices of the people who were there. The story line is well honed accompanied by stills, 16 mm smuggled out by one of the foreigners, and the actors provide voice for the foreigners. It is an incredibly moving and informative film. I sat next to two couples, two Japanese American men married to Chinese American women. One wife had seen the film the night before, and our night she brought everyone else back with her. I spoke with one of the husbands and he said that out of scale of 5 he gave it a 7. For the rest of the week I ran into others who saw the film and everyone said that they thought it was the best documentary they had ever seen in their lives. I totally agree.

I loved it. Lean mean scripting and even better sound editing. Technically impressive all the way around. To me one Mann's most creative. It gets a 10 on the "have to pee" test -- when you can't find a moment in the film that doesn't matter, you gotta hold it. And I did.

I'm not a fan of Colin Farrell but he's beginning to grow on me. And while it seems most people judge the size and quality of the role by how many words come out of the actors' mouths, Foxx and Li were masters in the unspoken. Also not a big fan of hand held riffs but Mann kept it to a minimum so it did what it's good at, creating emphasis and urgency. And I think the story fit the bill. The jargon and accents sometimes made it hard to follow, but I never lost track of the plot or wondered what the movie was about.

The overall look and feel of the film was riveting -- its immediacy, granularity of night scenes, Mann used just about every trick in the book to enhance his film without flaunting his virtuosity. But the sound editing and score blew me away. You've got to love a guy like that. He's a master who got out of the Hollywood mold and did his own thing. And yeah, this ain't your daddy's VICE.