Almost a docudrama along the lines of "Serpico", only this time the problem isn't a cabal of corrupt cops on the pad but multiple serial murders of young women in the border city of Juarez, across from El Paso.
The characters aren't fully developed. They're not supposed to be. This is a story about sociology, not personal drama. The script wanders around quite a bit but it's difficult to see how this could have been avoided because the disappearance and murders of so many women can't be extracted from the political and economic contexts.
And there are a lot of women brutally raped, murdered, sometimes frozen for a while, then dumped to rot in the desert. It's presented with some brutality too, but not cheaply. On the two occasions when a pistol is fired, it doesn't go off with the resounding WHOOM of a howitzer but only with an impertinent crack.
The Serpico figure is Ana de la Riguera, who plays the policewoman with the burning intensity of complete commitment. Another reviewer observed that she'd spent too much time modeling and being made up, but I don't know why. Like almost all the other characters, she seems devoid of movie artifice.
The women who provide the prey for the male predators are mostly young women attracted to the border by the American-run factories that offer a living wage for nine hours a day, five days a week. It may not be much but it's better than what they could do in their rural villages. Two cousins are provided as examples of what can happen to them. Neither is especially cute or sexy. They look like two cheerful, slightly plump teens mulling over the platanos in a supermarket.
The women who come to Juarez are increasingly disappointed because it's a city of declining economic advantages. An American entrepreneur explains it to some Japanese businessman at a meeting. Mexican labor is cheaper than American. The young girls make about five dollars an hour. But businesses are leaving the border cities because labor is cheaper elsewhere. In Thailand you can get a worker for eighty-seven cents. What all this winds up as, is a kind of festering pool of instability and unrest. The Americans we see are vaguely sympathetic but they aren't going to help the Mexican police because, as one Texas congressman says, Americans aren't going to like seeing their tax dollars spent on law enforcement in another country. He's clearly right about that. Wars, yes. Law enforcement, no.
Why do the gangs kidnap, rape, and kill the girls? Because no one is there to stop them. The victims are strangers, so no family feuds result.
The attitude of the politicians towards this is one of irritation. Damn. The multitude of murders is beginning to dampen the tourist industry. Murders are so common that the newspapers have almost stopped mentioning them. The New York Times agrees to a story but it will be on page six. The Juarez talk radio host keeps bringing them up though, and is considered an enemy. "These murders are a hornet's nest and the best thing to do is stay away from it," explains the governor. Ana de la Riguera is determined to find out what's behind it and she does manage to make a dent in the murder craze but she pays for it with her job.
We can thank a merciful Providence that we don't have to sit through the scene in which she must hand over her shield and her piece. We just have to sit through his telling her to do it. The director spared us that much but he does have a tendency to wobble the camera around as if caught in a terrifying conflict about which direction to aim it.
As a narrative, this is rambling and sometimes a little confusing. There are lots of loose ends. Why introduce an industrial sized meat-packing freezer hidden underground in the middle of the desert if you're not going to explain it? But its informative value is so high that it makes up for the sometimes disjointed story. The dialog makes some cogent points. If you kill one woman, it's terrible. If you kill a dozen, it's mass murder. If you kill a couple of hundred in the course of a year, it's no longer news.
The characters aren't fully developed. They're not supposed to be. This is a story about sociology, not personal drama. The script wanders around quite a bit but it's difficult to see how this could have been avoided because the disappearance and murders of so many women can't be extracted from the political and economic contexts.
And there are a lot of women brutally raped, murdered, sometimes frozen for a while, then dumped to rot in the desert. It's presented with some brutality too, but not cheaply. On the two occasions when a pistol is fired, it doesn't go off with the resounding WHOOM of a howitzer but only with an impertinent crack.
The Serpico figure is Ana de la Riguera, who plays the policewoman with the burning intensity of complete commitment. Another reviewer observed that she'd spent too much time modeling and being made up, but I don't know why. Like almost all the other characters, she seems devoid of movie artifice.
The women who provide the prey for the male predators are mostly young women attracted to the border by the American-run factories that offer a living wage for nine hours a day, five days a week. It may not be much but it's better than what they could do in their rural villages. Two cousins are provided as examples of what can happen to them. Neither is especially cute or sexy. They look like two cheerful, slightly plump teens mulling over the platanos in a supermarket.
The women who come to Juarez are increasingly disappointed because it's a city of declining economic advantages. An American entrepreneur explains it to some Japanese businessman at a meeting. Mexican labor is cheaper than American. The young girls make about five dollars an hour. But businesses are leaving the border cities because labor is cheaper elsewhere. In Thailand you can get a worker for eighty-seven cents. What all this winds up as, is a kind of festering pool of instability and unrest. The Americans we see are vaguely sympathetic but they aren't going to help the Mexican police because, as one Texas congressman says, Americans aren't going to like seeing their tax dollars spent on law enforcement in another country. He's clearly right about that. Wars, yes. Law enforcement, no.
Why do the gangs kidnap, rape, and kill the girls? Because no one is there to stop them. The victims are strangers, so no family feuds result.
The attitude of the politicians towards this is one of irritation. Damn. The multitude of murders is beginning to dampen the tourist industry. Murders are so common that the newspapers have almost stopped mentioning them. The New York Times agrees to a story but it will be on page six. The Juarez talk radio host keeps bringing them up though, and is considered an enemy. "These murders are a hornet's nest and the best thing to do is stay away from it," explains the governor. Ana de la Riguera is determined to find out what's behind it and she does manage to make a dent in the murder craze but she pays for it with her job.
We can thank a merciful Providence that we don't have to sit through the scene in which she must hand over her shield and her piece. We just have to sit through his telling her to do it. The director spared us that much but he does have a tendency to wobble the camera around as if caught in a terrifying conflict about which direction to aim it.
As a narrative, this is rambling and sometimes a little confusing. There are lots of loose ends. Why introduce an industrial sized meat-packing freezer hidden underground in the middle of the desert if you're not going to explain it? But its informative value is so high that it makes up for the sometimes disjointed story. The dialog makes some cogent points. If you kill one woman, it's terrible. If you kill a dozen, it's mass murder. If you kill a couple of hundred in the course of a year, it's no longer news.