rheakhere A lot of reviews here assert that the sex scenes in this film are gratuitous and unnecessary, and I think those individuals may have missed the point of the film.Arriaga intended this story to be a conviction of sorts of the younger generation, who he sees as eschewing emotional and intellectual intimacy and using sex to fill the void. Sex is the primary language these characters speak, and it is also the evidence for which they are charged.Manuel does not have a very high regard for women. In the film, we see him use women for lust, for comfort, for anger, and for a bastardized form of love which I'll get to.After Gregorio is driven to suicide, he leaves a box for Manuel, who has been engaged in a years-long affair with Gregorio's girlfriend, Tania. In flashbacks, he shows little guilt, but when he receives the box, his guilt manifests as Gregorio's madness; he sees earwigs crawling on him, but they always disappear.The box contains notes and photos depicting things Gregorio could not possibly know: omens of Manuel's tryst with Gregorio's sister, Margarita, and things Manuel and Tania said to each other behind closed doors. More notes are delivered by Gregorio's friend Jacinto, who becomes the proxy by which Gregorio haunts Manuel from beyond the grave and protects Tania from being pulled down into Manuel's madness.As Manuel becomes further and further unhinged, we see that his love for Tania is hardly love at all, but is contingent upon her love for him. He loves her only because she loves him, and whenever he doubts her love, he becomes angry, violent, or distant with her.Their relationship culminates in a bizarre sex scene, the symbolism of which I'm still unsure about. After that, Manuel's life falls apart completely. Everyone leaves him, including Tania, but her parting words of love leave Manuel something to cling to in his coming solitude.If you like erotic dramas, this film does not disappoint. Apart from the scene described earlier, it isn't very difficult to understand, which is why some of the other reviews here confuse me a bit. It isn't an instant favorite of mine, but it is quite good, and I'd recommend a watch for any lovers of the genre.

Rodrigo Amaro "El Bufalo de la Noche" is one of those cases when you know the thing is going to be bad after some 20 minutes of watching and for some odd reasons you keep going just to see how worse it can get. There's a magnet in there that pulls you in, leaving you hooked for brief instants, but most of the time you'll be off, mind going other places and you probably fall asleep time and time again (like I did). If the purpose of such "movie" is to thrill and make us involved with the "plot" keeping us suspenseful why insisting in presenting a slow paced drama that goes nowhere? It's most gripping element is also the most gratuitous, most random and completely pointless: the sex scenes. That's why you stay awake while watching this. The director has claimed in interviews that "The Night Buffalo" was all about portraying two of the most worrying (and overlooked) problems of in Mexico, the young schizophrenics and young suicidal, a social problem with a high rating in the country. They needed to be visible in the movies one day. Writer Guillermo Arriaga (WHY? You have amazing scripts out there, why invest time in writing stuff like this?) with this novel and screenplay seemed to be looking in other direction, conceiving this as a sort of psychological thriller embedded in sex and strangeness disguised as plot twists. The most I could get was this: it revolves around Manuel (Diego Luna) and the way he deals with the suicide of his friend Gregorio (Gabriel González), a schizophrenic whose life has spiralled out of control after finding out that his girlfriend (Liz Gallardo) was cheating on him with Manuel. Most of the time is centered on Manuel's flashbacks about their friendship, we get the sense that something is about to go very wrong between both since Manuel already see the signs that Gregorio is getting more insane each day goes by; and it's also centered in the things Gregorio left behind, a box with objects and one more mystery to be solved by the protagonist. Somehow the biggest concern of the movie revolves in the explicit sex scenes, and it goes between Manuel and Tania, Gregorio's girlfriend, and also with Gregorio's sister. Actors are comfortable in doing those, Diego is always a treat while being part of those and there's plenty of him if you know what I mean (el guapo es muy caliente!), the scenes were greatly filmed (except the car scene which was very weird) but they're pointless to the movie's cause. And it's a severe bad case of movies/characters confusing sex with love. I remember when love was something that involved action and not just sticking sexual members into each other. He says he loves Tania more than his friend did, but at no point such was presented, it's just infatuation, the urgency of wanting to be with the other. For what? Those characters aren't described sufficiently or interesting enough so we can believe they're in love with each other, or that they have something special to share.The mystery, the delusions, the clues, the so-called buffalo of the night, the whispered voices in the night...who cares? It's so dull and poorly put, ultimately you're there for nothing, less than nothing. Pathetic. I won't say it was bad acted. Luna was decent, but his character was so lifeless, charmless yet all the girls got the hots for him; González steals the show from him in his brief scenes, very believable as someone who is losing his mind but even so he managed to understand that he couldn't trust his best friend. I would have enjoyed a frightening confront between both instead of each scaring women on their own, in two separate occasions towards the conclusion.There's very little gain from "The Night Buffalo", so why bother? Unless you're only in it for the exciting scenes which are not all that exciting. As for the pinhead who put this film as from the adult genre on this website, please go watch real adult movies before updating stuff in here. "The Brown Bunny" had way more things - real, by the way - than this movie and still isn't categorized as such. If you go a step forward and end up buying this, at least it'll be useful as a replacement for sleeping pills. I pity Luna and Arriaga fans for falling into this entrapment. They are great but not in here. 3/10

RainDogJr I never read this book but when i hear about the film i was very excited; first because i'm a big fan of Guillermo Arriga's first work after the success with Inarritu's films: "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada". And second because i'm also a big fan of The Mars Volta so it looks like a really good film.Unlike "The Three.............", this film is more know in Mexico than in the rest of world and it gain a big attention for all the Mexican press and in consequence of all the people. So it was like a "big disappointment", because all the critic was terrible and they were expecting another "Amores Perros".I saw it in the opening day and i like it. Is about two friends: Gregorio and Manuel; when Gregorio commits suicide Manuel starts having a strange relation with Gregorio's world. The plot is good and i love the final part of the film when we saw what was the only thing that Manuel wants: the love of Tania.The cast is just OK, Diego Luna is not an actor that i admire but in this film is good and i find the nude scenes just as a normal thing in films as in life; i don't understand why all the bad comments just for those scenes. Of course the character of Camila Sodi is nothing but unnecessary as her nude but well is Camila Sodi.The music is really great, Omar Rodriguez Lopez is one of my favourites guitar players right now and is really cool to hear his music in a theater.In conclusion: Arriaga proves that he can make good and strange stories, in this case the director is not great as Inarritu but for be his first feature film is not bad. So this is a good film that have all the bad reviews just for an excessive publicity in Mexico and in less things you know about this film you will enjoy it more. 6.5 out of 10

RottenMoreno Guillermo Arriaga, writer of Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel, returns to Mexico to deliver what can easily be called the biggest disaster in Mexican cinema in years, The Night Buffalo, with Diego Luna in the leading role and a plot involving a schizophrenic man (Gabriel Gonzalez), who commits suicide after his girlfriend (Liz Gallardo) cheats on him with his best friend (Luna).The Night Buffalo, a very promising film, supposedly going to give new light to Mexican cinema fails to impress and even throws our country back a few steps with its awfulness. After the vomit inducing, yet inexplicable box office success KM 31, I was more than ready to experience an upgrade in film-making, what I got was a major letdown, a pointless awkward "drama" filled with unnecessary sex and nudity that was surprisingly close to become a porn flick.I don't understand Arriaga's screenplay... so, he actually wrote all the sex scenes? Wow, what a pervert. The whole film was completely pointless, if I wanted to see Diego Luna nude and screwing around with the whole cast, well there are better films where you can see that. It appears like the filmmakers made the film for the sole reason of watching everyone naked, the movie was about 2 hours long and one of them was sex. So yeah, there are artistic ways of showing nudity and some scripts need it, but this movie didn't need any, it had an interesting plot itself, but it didn't move an inch from the synopsis, nothing interesting ever happened in the film and even after the rushed and ridiculous ending, I was still waiting for something, ANYTHING, to make my time spent on the theater worth it.The movie was unfocused, what was it's objective? The main plot was misused, I was interested in the schizophrenic character, but instead of developing him, they show him naked! And apparently that's the answer to every single question in the film, as none of the characters gets any development, not that we care about what happens to them since they are all worth hating, but at least we expect something to occur. The Night Buffalo should have focused in its audience, their need for an interesting, thrilling, suspenseful story, or maybe just focus on the title's premise shall we? Nothing, we get some nonsense lines here and there, but nothing solid ever sees the light.Diego Luna's role was probably one of the characters I've most hated in all cinema history, how are we supposed to care for a character that betrayed his best friend sleeping with his girlfriend, and then betrayed her, sleeping with his best friend's sister, which is another blow towards his friend, who I can understand wants to kill himself being surrounded by such a disgusting bunch of people. Yuck, this was plain terrible, nothing to save from the film, everything felt awkward and unnecessary, boring as hell and one of the worst movies I've had the displeasure to see. Arriaga has just bought himself a ticket to Crapville, enjoy your stay.