600 Millas

I enjoyed it.

'600 Miles' is fairly simple and doesn't trailblaze anything new, yet for what it is I found entertainment in it. Tim Roth is good and Kristyan Ferrer is solid, I liked seeing them two in a road trip setting. The film does wrap up quicker than I thought it would, but that's not a negative. Nowt special, though suitably watchable.

Laid back approach to exciting drama that gets where it's going to very slowly and quietly. For the most part though the director keeps us distant from the characters and the action. Unfortunately this limits our involvement.

I liked this movie. It's good for washing you off Hollywood stuff once in a while. The camera behavior differs from the habitual and leaves you pondering and doing your own interpretation in a variety of moments. This different take leaves you in the edge of the couch sometimes! It also shows how easy it is for a stupid young man to buy loads of guns and how easy it is for a young man to choose the wrong path.

This films basic plot is ok. However, the movie has one major flaw. It is painfully slow and develops at a snails pace. This has an adverse impact on the whole film. Neither the story or the characters progress sufficiently to keep your interest. Also the hand held camera style is used quite a bit. Whilst it may be intended to give the film reality. It actually tends to make the film appear low budget. In the end this film is boring and it's a struggle to make it to the end.

600 miles at 85 minutes is a relatively short feature, but in terms of screenplay and storyline, it actually seems padded out at that length. Truth to tell, though long on distance according to the title, the movie is brief on story. There's plenty of footage of people travelling in darkly lit vehicles, not saying a lot or saying nothing at all. Consider Tim Roth's Hank Harris ATF officer is really only in about the last hour of the film (at most). It takes close to 30 minutes to set things up, before he arrives on the scene and even then, there hasn't been a lot happening. I'm still not sure what the film is trying to say. That gun-running for cartels is dangerous and sucks in too many young Mexicans seeking the fast road out of poverty. Well, we probably already knew that.

The first act involved Arnulfo's American associate walking in and out of several gun shops, whilst looking at guns and talking to staff. Director Gabriel Ripstein doesn't mind repeating himself, but I'm still a little vague at what he was messaging. Suffice to say we get to the denouement relatively quickly, but that all ends up being somewhat ill-defined too. Kind of inevitable I'd suggest, for what really is a pretty half-baked production that somehow managed to get Tim Roth involved. Give me its bigger-budgeted cousin any day of the week.