Review of 8 Murders a Day (2011) by Carsten S — 05 Mar 2011

Saw this in Phoenix last week. was really excited to see it since I just recently finished reading Amexica a book also about the mexico/usa border conflict. but while amexica tries to understand the root causes of the boarder issues by looking at all the different underlying drivers, the movie is really just a waste of time. it has a clear agenda and operates just like a glenn beck monologue ... well just from a leftist point. the movie from the get go confronts the viewer with its two points of views. 1. the boarder conflict is the greatest humanitarian issue the world is facing and 2. the root cause of it is that the rich in mexico (and the US) are fighting and killing the poor in order to get rid of them.

So point one is debatable, and I think it is useless to do bodycounts in order to say what is worse ... the irq occupation, dafur or the current border conflict. they are all horrible.

Point two is the bigger allegation and while mexico certainly has a class problem I am not sure that the reason for the drug was is an eradication plan by the rich and powerful. if one makes a claim like this one better have evidence. but the movie has none. just because the film maker goes to juarez for a couple of days he does never shows any authority in understanding the subject, clearly only skimming the topics and never asking ad on questions to his obvious leftist cast of "experts".

So an absolutely poor execution of a topic that needs a great documentary.