El Infierno *****

Translated Title: "Hell"

Director: Luis Estrada
Year: 2010
Writers: Luis Estrada, Jaime Sampietro
Cinematographer: Damian Garcia

Here is some great film making, perhaps not as polished as Scorcese, but much more powerful. Here is a film who's relevance to its native culture is immense. A film that speaks to Mexico, satirizing its culture in a serious way... totally rooted in truth, and despite the despair felt by the director at the condition of this culture, he doesn't weigh the film down with that despair... he appropriately finds moments for comic relief, understanding that laughing at the culture is a strong form of critique, and yet avoids joke-making. This is a film by mexicans, for mexicans, satirizing the mexican drug-cartel culture. The prelude to the film portrays the poor mexican who decides to go to the US looking for a better life... 20 years later, he's deported back to Mexico and shocked to find that things are WORSE now than when he left 20 years ago (economic crisis, drug war) he finds that the only way to meet his economic needs is to become a narco-trafficer. Then greed and all the pitfalls common among the foolishly greedy befall the hero as he becomes more and more involved... finally ending in a massacre motivated by personal reasons. And there the film seems to end, with this sarcastic 2010 Mexican Bicentennial Celebration of the Mexican Independance which proclaims "nothing to celebrate." Look at the condition Mexico is in, you either starve, or you join the narco-trafficers and you participate in brutal violence until you and your family meet their own violent ends.

The script is marvelously thought out, giving each character a fully developed arch with symbolic meaning. Everyone is bought by their greed for money, although they originally object to the narcotics trafficking... they come around to the idea of being rich no matter the source of the blood money. The film is actually structured very similarly to another great film directed by Luis Estrada, "La Ley de Herodes" which was a critique of the mexican political system, especially the power of the PRI political party which had unchallenged control over the country for more than 70 years, this film even stars the same actor, Damián Alcázar. Alcázar is great in his role, as is Joaquín Cosio as El Cochiloco.

The most poignant part is the epilogue in which after we see the gruesome decline of everyone in the movie, the main character's nephew, the lone survivor and symbol of the next generation, the hope of mexico... decides to "continue the family tradition of idiocy" and become a "narco", thus implying that the cycle continues, and we thus know already that the boy will also meet a bloody fate... it stands as a warning to the youth of mexico looking to get rich quick with the narco-trafficker way of life... and yet the film is not a "don't join the narco-traffickers" message film, its much bigger than that, it satirizes the corruption of the mexican government, and the complicity of even Federal Police and elected officials, and how they all live on the drug-cartel pay-roll because the bribes offered are greater than their government-paid monthly salary. And with an economy so broken that it offers no other jobs that might be pathways to the middle-class, and the United States which deports you back to Mexico... there is no good option... welcome to hell, Viva Mexico!