Born Killers or Die

Let this film serve as a public service announcement, at the very least. When driving anywhere in any major Latin American city, don't drive a big, shiny, expensive SUVs because you're only begging to make yourself a target. Secuestro Express is less than 24 hours in the life of a rich, young couple and the car-jackers who take them hostage. It's quick-passed, violent, bloody, and even funny at times. It feels real and tangible.

While in the custody of their kidnappers, the young couple is taken to a flamingly gay cocaine dealer who ends up having sex with the male hostage. The beautiful woman hostage is taken to an abandoned and rundown apartment where she is almost raped and is tripping on the ecstasy pills she was forced to take.

In other words, Secuestro Express is not appropriate for small children, but it is a hell of a ride along the lines of Traffic and Pulp Fiction. But it takes place in the seemingly lawless town of Caracas, Venezuela, and that makes it even scarier.

"Secuestro Express" is a neat little twisty thriller in the exaggerated style of gritty British crime dramas like "Layer Cake," with a pointed political and social overlay.

Using swooping, in-your-face close-up cameras, limited narration and dossier-style on screen character and time descriptors, writer/director Jonathan Jakubowicz, in his full-length fiction debut, captures a docudrama feel to make the kidnapping of a young, lighter-skinned couple by a motley group of "nigros" (darker-skinned) thugs, with a variety of psychological and financial motives for doing this "work", a commentary on class in Latin America, specifically in Caracas, Venezuela.

The individuality of all the characters, including the criminals, adds to the explosive unpredictability as stereotypes of Latin American culture are ironically skewered, including oligarchies, macho men, religion and sensuality, as each person uses political and class rhetoric to justify greed, selfishness and condescension on all sides.

Drugs are caustically shown to have pervasively corrupted and enthralled all levels of the society through a harrowing picaresque exploration of "the ghetto" (as the subtitles translated the geography).

The acting is excellent, particularly Mía Maestro, of TV's "Alias," who goes through an entire spectrum of emotions. Jean Paul Leroux as her boyfriend "Martin" is very good at shifting gears as our sympathies shift around him.

The song selection felt very atmospheric and the soundtrack kept the tension ratcheted up.

The "fire next time" coda didn't quite work or add much to what we think the characters learned that night except assuring us that life ominously goes on among all the classes despite the continuing sharp differences.

Excellent Movie! The cast of this movie did an incredible job! It is sad, but real, people in Latin America are going to situations just as described in the movie.

Mia Maestro, really showed to all of us her talent, for those Spanish speakers know how different the Argentinian accent is, and she was able to imitate the Venezuelan accent perfectly.

I am sure does who are related to Venezuela when they go and see this movie will have an after taste in their mouths for several days. It is cruel but very real.

I hope that more movies like this are done

I recommend this movie to everybody.

Daniel

The video quality in Secuestro Express is truly disappointing from the very beginning. The movie starts with blurry images of shanty towns in Caracas, I thought the blur was an intentional effect, and maybe perfect in-focus images were soon going to kick in, showing in sharp details the "ranchos and cerros", but nope... detail never arrived, the video quality was actually as bad as what I was thinking could be a blur special effect. Gave it the benefit of the doubt thinking it could be the theater's fault, but once again nope: letters in Twisted-Metal-Black evoking style started popping up on screen naming each character in the movie, and those letters were decently sharp and in focus. So it wasn't the theater but the film, no doubt. Thumbs down to extremely poor video quality.

Good points: acting of some of the bad guys, some of them were believably bad guys in some occasions, not in all occasions though. Overall cursing and foul language was also very realistic and spot-on. The girls acting was also good in some occasions, but not in all as well though. A nice aesthetic touch right before the nightmare, the song by Soledad Bravo in the drugstore was particularly beautiful.

Bad points: rich vs. poor philosophizing in the movie was extremely lame. Also, making the rich girl of a wealthy young couple in Caracas a generous and selfless/sacrificed voluntary nurse is pushing her character "just a bit", to say the least. To my surprise, acting of Ruben Blades was rather lame. Acting of the boyfriend I think was also extremely lame. Some of the unexpected twists in the movie seemed a little forced and extreme. That's completely subjective of course, just my impression. At the end, pervert cops nightmare possibility saved by a pseudo heroic act of one of the bad guys was also rather forced and imho lame, very unnecessary.

Years ago, Warner Brothers re-released its two landmark gangster films of the thirties, "Little Caesar" and "Public Enemy" with a brief prologue that said the gangster was a problem "we the public must eventually solve." Writer/director Jonathan Jakubowicz's "Secuestro Express" ends with a epilogue that notes that "half the people of the world suffer from malnutrition, the other half from obesity." It's a stunning message, but it almost gets lost because the film it caps is a stunning thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat and for the most part, keeps you from focusing much on the social issues involved.

Set in Caracas,Venezuela, the film examines what has become almost a regional pastime in Latin America, kidnapping. In this case, its quick, down and dirty snatches of middle class people whose families can pony up relatively modest amounts of money in exchange for getting their loved ones back in one piece. It's literally "Express kidnapping." This particular abduction is of a trendy young upper middle class couple snatched as they snort coke and toke marijuana in their SUV outside a trendy nightclub. That all plays a role in the story, for the nominal leader of the trio of thugs castigates the victims for rubbing their wealth in people's faces by wearing expensive clothes and driving pricey cars. But the kidnappers are not revolutionaries, just minor hoodlums who, in a bid to collect just 40-thousand dollars in ransom, terrorize two perfectly normal people.

Carlos Julio Molina, Pedro Perez and Carlos Madera are outstanding as the hoodlums, as different from standard Hollywood criminals as night is from day. Jean Paul Leroux is also good as the male half of the trendy couple, a man with secrets of his own.

But the star of this film is the female kidnap victim, played by the beautiful and unreasonably talented Mia Maestro. She danced her way through "Tango," she has sung her way through numerous stage musicals and this time, she gets to act her way though 24 hours of hell. She handles the role magnificently, her emotions skipping from rage to flirtatious manipulation, to utter horror when she believes she is about to be raped and murdered.

For those who have seen her on "Alias," playing Jennifer Garner's sister in spying, Maestro more than lives up to the promise she showed there.

This movie is a jolting, sometimes shocking picture that often makes you uncomfortable, but never bores you. See this thriller, but don't ignore its message.