The film representation of the characteristics of poverty in Latin America, and of the phenomena it originates, has developed through the years, from the populist portraits of the 1930s and 1940s, in which being poor almost equaled sainthood (as in "Nosotros, los pobres"), to the movies of today called "porno-misery" by some critics. In the early 1950s Luis Buñuel's "Los olvidados" turned the tables, with its depiction of a disturbing high level of cruelty among the child and teenager delinquents of México City, and it paved the way for movies based on serious research. In this vein, the documentary "Tire dié" made by Fernando Birri and his students was a filmed survey of marginalization and misery in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina. Movies with a new approach were made, as "Romance del Anicento y la Francisca" in Argentina, "El chacal de Nahueltoro" in Chile, "Gamín" in Colombia, "Pixote" in Brazil, among others, as well as later works with aspirations for stronger sociological value, as "Sicario" from Venezuela or "La vendedora de rosas" in Colombia. These films painted a more precise picture of the social situation in Latin America, and of the underprivileged, without accusations or sermons. The release of "Cidade de Deus" marked the start of a curious phenomenon: although the film was based on a book that sustains the violent description of the story being told, most audiences and critics were dazzled by its technical virtuosity to describe violence, putting aside its social value. Since then we are having, from all fronts, movies that, using the consumerism ethics, and the aesthetics and rigor of a publicity spot, trivialize social inequity and misery, and glamorize crime. "Secuestro express" falls into this category. It is a Hollywood version of a frequent phenomenon - kidnapping. As almost all of the good or bad films dealing with poverty, there is no intention to point reasons: in these movies, you seldom hear of bad distribution of national wealth, hoarders, landowners or creole oligarchies that have sold their countries to transnationals. This is not the reason why I blame these movies, which have the right to make their own statement, but the accommodation of their own local situations to worn out formulas of traditional narratives, giving solutions to their dramas that, in the execution, resemble more foreign action movies, than Latin America realities. They even describe the characters as stereotypes of 1940s melodramas: these seldom react as they would in real life, but in a way that allows the creators to make "beautiful shots". For example, when the kidnapped woman (Mia Maestro) is released momentarily in a lonely place, far away from Caracas, instead of running for her life, she falls and cries in the dust, a strategy that permits the director and cinematographer to make a few nice shots of Maestro, and a chance to add a second ending to the story. The script follows a predictable direction (another example: of all the taxis in Caracas, the woman's runaway boyfriend boards the cab chauffeured by one of the kidnappers' accomplices), that unfortunately turns the movie into a catalog of common places. In the end, the authors divide the world in a 50% of hungry persons and 50% of well-bred folks. A little research would have revealed to them that, in the real world, the percentage of hungry people surpasses by a great margin the filmmakers' lack of information.
Review of Secuestro express
