dlonfa I don't think this movie is a rip off of No country for old men or of The Departed, i do agree with the fact that this movie is not the South American "Amores Perros", nor do i think that is the movie that will launch Colombian film industry to success. I think that's exaggerated. I do think some actors overact like "El Orejon" (Blas Jaramillo). Nonetheless i don't believe like others that this is a bad movie, on the contrary i think that looking and comparing it with other Colombian films it's probably one of the best. I don't think the intention of the writer/director was for us to empathize with the characters, like somebody said it's more a movie of atmospheres and i think that is the way the story plot is narrated rather than the story itself. Is more the form and structure than the content; the story turns around two main characters: Luna Negra (Oscar Borda) and Peñaranda (Marlon Moreno), and around the way the sensationalist journal "El Caleño" retakes an element of the plot and presents it to the public as something that has already happened but that the characters who read it don't even suspect that they are involved in it one way or the other, sometimes neither those the viewer. This is something that goes unnoticed for many viewers of the film. And the other element is the man who's always calling to the motel room asking for a woman who isn't there, we believe this is just some kind of joke but it has a consequence in the end. Another interesting thing are the two main characters, one which is cursed by a voodoo sorceress which uses a picture of him in a glass with a millipedes that crushes the picture as a symbol of what's going to happen to him. You can see how the character's condition deteriorates throughout the film, the nightmares, the hallucinations, the vision of his victim drowning in the sewer, and the way his little donut-like anti-stress object is dragged mysteriously by the sewer. The other character, Peñaranda, is the "street-dog" who thinks his more clever than the "mobster-pedigree-dog" and who thinks he's going to get along untouched with his plan. The end of the film is somewhat predictable, a way of saying that crime doesn't pay

johno-21 I recently saw this at the 2009 Palm Springs International Film Festival. This was Columbia's official submission for consideration in Best Foreign film to the Academy Awards. This is also the debut film of writer/director Carlos Moreno and he offers up a dark crime drama mixed with dark comedy in this film set in infamous drug cartel city of Cali. victor (Marlon Moreno) and Eusedio (Oscar Borda) are two low level criminals, one who has stolen a bag of his bosses drug money and the other who has killed the bosses godson. The consequences of their actions drive the darkly witty plot with lots of twists, turns and gruesome killings. It's a fast paced script from director Moreno along with Alonso Torres and colorful cinematography by Juan Carlos Gil. Still it's a typical blood and guts mob movie about greed and betrayal but it does have several interesting characters and some strange comedy like a Quentin Tarantino might have. I would give it a 7.0 out of 10.

Bass9987 I'm from Colombia, and this movie is one of the worst things I've ever seen. Reasons 1. Rip off of No Country for old men: A guy who tries to steal money from a criminal. 2. Rip off of The Departed: A guy who pretends to be something that he's not, the money and the ending. 3. The performances are awful, a bad guy who spits like everywhere, a man who yells at everything that moves. 4. Yes, people curse, but all the time? 5. Rip off of The Sopranos: Duh! Mobsters who kill for fun, that's NOT being the mobster, watch an episode of The Sopranos and that's the portrait of the REAL mafia. 6. The Cinematography, bad colors, bad lighting. 7. It's very illogical, the actions don't go according to the personality of the characters. 8. It's so flat, zero character development. 9. It's too long, it doesn't add anything new. 10. Do they have to explain and justify by talking every little thing that they do? THIS MOVIE HAS NO SUBTEXT!

apoloduvalis This is an accurate while though portrait of crime underworld in Cali (second biggest Colombian city), plenty of a dark sense of humor and local culture elements such as witchery, drug traffic, poverty, and a very interesting atmosphere of salsa and African American music.It is remarkable the photography direction, specially the coloring and texture of all movie, which emphasizes the feeling of permanent heat (Cali is a tropical place). Oh, and the FX work is very convincing. If you have a lot of gunshots, you will need a lot of fake blood, right? Well, in this film every gun fire sequence is very well played without making you get out of focus of main plot.Main characters are played in a very convincing way with a very local taste, but in the end of the film you get the feeling of having witnessed events that could happen at the darkest corners of any city in the world.