Lima: Breaking the Silence (1999) User Reviews

Who makes these movies?????

[DreamHunter · 1/10 · 15 March 2001]

Ok, so it's more of a rhetorical question, but still, the mind boggles. Was there any kind of thought put behind this project other than "let's get a few quick bucks out of this controversial event in a third-world country"?

Forget about how insulting this thing is for Peruvians and everyone involved in the real Hostage Situation the movie's "based" on (well, everyone except the terrorists themselves... They come up rather triumphantly when all is said and done). Forget about how irresponsibly the facts and the story are treated (if you're going to be so careless about the facts, why not use an imaginary country and imaginary characters?). Let's forget about all those aspects. Let's pretend this is just an original story. A piece of fiction. You know what? It still blows! Big time.

And it's not only because of the terrible acting, or the poor dialogue. It's also because this movie doesn't just ask you to suspend your disbelief. It asks you to take you disbelief and flush it down the toilet. The plot points lack any kind of logic. And when you think things can't get more ridiculous, the film-makers prove you wrong: Here, between the President dressed up as a soldier and the gratuitous sex scene, let's place a dance number!

Now, I'm not saying it's not fun. It's hilarious, if you're Peruvian. And I guess it's kind of amusing if you're the type that likes to watch train-wrecks and such. It's the kind of film that is so bad, it's almost acceptable. But, on the other hand, it's perplexing. There were actual human beings who thought they were telling a good story here? And telling it effectively?

Man... It gets really scary after a while.

A mockery of a true event.

[caficho · 1/10 · 7 March 2001]

This "film" pretends to dramatize the ordeal of the people who were taken hostage by MRTA terrorists in Lima, Peru, in the Residence of the Ambassador of Japan. Instead, we get a story which has Japanese officials playing mariachi music, terrorists and hostages dancing the tango, and the terrorist leader going to bed with the Dutch Ambassador. As a person who lived not 10 blocks away from what really happened, this movie is simply an insult to all involved.

The most stupid and distorted vision of the violence in Peru ever

[the_ray · 1/10 · 12 March 2001]

I began to see the movie thinking that I was going to enjoy it. And you know what?: I did. It is so bad that most of the time I couldn't help it but laugh. Who was the movie's historical advisor? A Mexican citizen? A Chicano? It is no wonder that Disney did "The Emperor's New Groove" and everybody loved it, having that Hollywood thinks of all Latin-Americans as Mexican-like clones. The music is so bad chosen that I almost forgot that I was seeing a movie about Peru and started looking for "Zorro" or Speedy Gonzales. For God's sake! Couldn't they put some real Peruvian music?

Moreover, the dialogues, situations and characters are so ridiculous that I am wondering how Christopher Atkins agreed to do this movie. Poor guy! And with him, all the other "A-Team" and "MacGyver" extras that acted here.

How could anybody possibly think of terrorists in Peru as romantic, heroic heroes, so charming and cult that a foreign ambassador held as hostage would fall in love with one of them after one night? And what about the American journalist that managed to hide himself for months among the crowd of hostages before being recognized? Give me a break!

Wow. Lame.

[e_luongvan · 1/10 · 2 November 2006]

The only positive thing I can say about this movie is that it makes other low production films look good. Truly appalling acting, woeful dialog, pissweak stunts, it made other "I can't believe they made that" films such as Frozen Impact and Octapus 2 look like Oscar material. This is a hostage film where you couldn't give a toss about what happens to the irritating captives, or the so-stupid-they-deserve-to-die terrorists. Out of all the dreadful things in this film (too many to count), the thing that really summed up this movie for me was a supposedly ritzy party scene where the waiters in the ballroom were carrying trays bearing wine? champagne? you might ask, no...two glasses of water each. Wow. Lame.

The most stupid film ever made

[tlimof · 3 January 2002]

This film is so bad is not even worth reviewing, in fact it shouldn't be even here, it should be in the Internet Trash Data Base. It makes look hispanics, chinese, japanese, and all other races except americans. It's so stupid the terrorists look like the true heroes and the actors that portray them look like models. If the terrorists looked like that why bother being terrorists if they could make a career in modeling. The movie is plain stupid, it has all the cliches of what a latin american should look like. The writers think that all countries look alike, images of the president and flags everywhere, the jails are the worst, the cops are crooks, and the crooks are cops. The president always on fatigues come on this movie is just so idiotic, besides Cristopher Atkins is the star that should be enough to drive you away!!!

The most distorted version of the real facts that I have ever seen

[hsndlt · 1/10 · 23 April 2005]

Since most of the people that are going to read this review are most likely to be American, I will summarize how I felt when I saw this movie with something you will understand.

Imagine that an independent producer decides to make a movie about the events of September 11, and in such picture, the pilots that crashed those planes on the WTC were presented as freedom fighters and the US government presented as a cancer that needs to be removed from the face of Earth. And not only that, but the rest of the world seemed to support the terrorist as well. So those "heroic men" (the ones that crashed the planes) should be in heaven now, for doing such a noble thing to bring down the government.

That is how this picture presented the real terrorist problem of Peru. If anyone really wants to know about the facts that surrounded the events regarding the hostages situation in the Japanese Embassy in Lima, they should seek for newspaper records. I suggest trying El Comercio and La Republica.

Lara and Drago make great anti-hero/anti-villains!

[KnatLouie · 6/10 · 5 February 2007]

Okay, this movie is directed by Menaham Golan, produced by NuImage and shot in Sofia, Bulgaria and shares half the cast with the movie "Armstrong" and was made in the same year, so I'm guessing they may have been shot back to back.

There aren't really any heroes in this movie, Joe Lara is a rebel leader who takes the Japanese embassy hostage but as far as I could make out he's not really a bad guy. Billy Drago is CIA, but is more of a bad guy and doesn't fair well at the end of the movie.

It tries to make Bulgaria look like Peru unsuccessfully, as it's very obvious it's shot in a former Soviet country, and there are numerous bad fake Spanish accent and not a single ethnic Peruvian in it! But it's not as bad as the other reviews would suggest though. It's obviously factually very incorrect, but if it wasn't trying to be based on real events it's quite competent.

Richard Lynch, Charles Napier, Joe Lara were all in Armstrong. Napier had very little screen time in Armstrong, so they probably flew him over to do one movie and persuaded him to shoot a few scenes for the other in short notice! So overall, I'd recommend this to anyone who liked Armstrong, and of course to anybody else who likes a decent low-budget action-movie.