Carne de neón

Dramatic film with comedy elements and attractive, charming characters. Pura : Angela Molina, just released from prlson. A simple fact that changes the whole existence of Ricky : Mario Casas, who attempts to please his mother Pura. In a desperate attempt to show an ordinary life he becomes a businessman by trying to create a brothel house to be attended by his mother. Then he joins a group of underdog as well as useless colleagues and prostitutes, such as : a tiny crook : Vicente Romero, his bouncer henchman : Luciano Caceres, a Junkie: Macarena Gomez, a pregnant immigrant : Vanessa Oliveira, and a transvestite called La Infantita : Damaso Conde. Along the way Ricky has to contend a dangerous mobster nicknamed Chino : Dario Grandinetti and a kidnapping of the daughter : Blanca Suarez of a corrupt police inspector : Antonio de la Torre with whom Chino seeks vengeance.

Intense and sleaze drama with emotion, thrills, gross-out scenes and violence. The picture benefits itself from sympathetic though unfortunate characters who suffer distresses, mistreating and pains. Stars Mario Casas giving an acceptable acting in his usual style as the young hustler-turned-entrepreneur who joins some botcher buddies attempting to open a brothel by hoping to earn his mother's respect, being well interpreted by the veteran Angela Molina. Accompanied by a large support cast delivering nice performances such as Vicente Romero, Blanca, Suarez, Antonio de la Torre, Luciano Caceres and Dario Grandinetti as an extremely villain role as gangster Chino. This film is based on the Short titled Carne de Neon (2005) also directed by Paco Cabezas with Oscar Jaenada, Victoria Abril and Vicente Romero, Macarena Gomez repeating roles.

It contains a brilliant and adequate cinematography by Daniel Aranyo, shot in Spain and Buenos Aires Argentine. As well as moving and catching musical score by Daniel Araujo and Javier de la Rosa. The motion picture was well made by Paco Cabezas and it was nominee in Toulouse Festival 2011 to best director . His first successful film was Aparecidos, and directing this Neon Flesh to be loved by Nicolas Cage who hired him to make a Hollywood film, Tokarev . There Cabezas made another hit : Mr Right. Subsequently he made various TV episodes from famous TV series as Penny Dreadful, American gods, The strain, Fear of the walking dead, Penny Dreadful : city of Los Angeles, among others. Rating :6.5/10. Decent Spanish film that will appeal to Mario Casas fans.

The script is a complete mess, none of the black humour is funny and the jokes and references to people having sex with dogs are disgusting and disturbing.

A lot of low lifes in this film with a gritty crime thriller. pretty good characters and acting. there are some decent twists and turns too.

First things first: The cinematography in this is really amazing. Great lighting, great framing, very well done. Someone has studied their thrillers very thoroughly and made good notes on how to be inspired by them. I also have to point out, that the story is trying to be socially relevant. Not with too much weight on the morality though. Or not in the way most viewers are used to.

The movie does not have (m)any likable character in it. Starting with our "hero", his best friend and the rest of the bunch. But even within that group it tries to create diversity. Give characters more than one facet. I use the word try, because I don't think it fully succeeds in most of its attempts. You can still get excited by it (as one reviewer here has shown and good for him/her), but you have seen far better movies than that. Or at least I hope you have.

Talk about misogyny can easily be brought up with this movie. While it is not afraid to touch hot topics (human trafficking being another one amongst many), the characters never seem to do the right thing. If that offends you, you most definitely won't like the movie. The twists are predictable and you have to decide on your own, if that's the way you'd say thanks to your mom. In the end, the movie tried to put too many things together and might even fail many with its attempt to solve things with its (bad?) humor

The first time that I saw that this movie only had a 5.something in IMDb I thought "maybe is not a good idea" but I gave it a chance and... WOW! Its funny (Sometimes dark, violently funny)thrilling, its been long, maybe since "Fargo" that a movie amazed me this much, the mix of genres is outstanding, it starts with comedy, shifts to thriller and finally to a drama.

The characters are so funny and fragile (Even though sometimes they do terrible things) but thats one of the things that I liked the most, the movie is challenging, you never know where the director is gonna take you and is always surprising. The actors are great, specially Vicente Romero and Angela Molina, they steal the movie.

By the way the ending is one of the best endings I've ever seen, so moving... A great film about bad guys with a huge heart, a must see!