Ciudad de M

Ciudad de M succeeds in many levels, especially the script which starts clumsily but then takes us through a dark trip with the forgotten youth of Lima. The main problem of the movie is its casting which would have been much better had the director chosen someone less white and more peruvian to play the part of M. Magill is a good actor, however he does not fit the image of a low class bum in a city like Lima. The plot is straightforward, and the dialogue (though full of cuss words) brought me back to the Lima of the 90's. I liked the cinematography and the fact that the only tried to show the ugly side of a metropolis like Lima. Definitely worth the wait and the time

This is a shallow movie that wants to be a realistic satire and scathing comment of Lima and Peruvian society. However it just comes across as one of the lesser soap operas produced by Luis Llosa. The dialog was written by posers. The climax and the epilogue are just plain stupid. The acting was amateur at best. The supposed depiction of poverty is one that obviously comes from upper-middle-class people, and racially it is far from realistic. The characters reminded me more of the snobs in Lima who like to pretend they are tough by dressing in $100 headbanger outfits and having fights outside a snob mall. They would have been beaten up in nanoseconds by the real street criminals. Check "Tinta Roja" or "Dias de Santiago" for a more realistic Lima.

This is a first rate, first acted movie. The director, the novel on which the movie is based and the scriptwriter have done a superb job. It successfully portrays the "middle class" that years of violence and economic crisis have left in Peru. Nothing to do with a typical Hollywood movie: it's pure acting, imagination, sense of humor and drama. Anybody interested in knowing Perú and Lantin America and in enjoying a good piece of art should see this movie. It borrows from Latin American, US and European cinema to create an original, truly Peruvian cinematic language. Specially relevant is the top acting quality of all actors that participated in this movie.