Review of Compadres (2016) by Valdemar R — 02 Oct 2016

Wow, really bad, on so many levels. It's only saving grace was Omar Chaparro, whose portrayal of Garza was believable and entertaining, but due to a terrible script was not compelling. The film tries a little too hard to fit too much story into too little time. We are asked to understand and sympathize with Garza's motivations before his character is even given a chance to develop.

SPOILERS:

Within the first 5 minutes, Garza and his partner are introduced, drive to a drug dealer's stash house, beat up the guards, crash through the door, engage in a gunfight, and the partner is killed. How on Earth are we supposed to sympathize with the loss of a character that we've known for less than 5 minutes and have very little development of? How are we expected to understand the true emotional motivation of Garza to get revenge when we know just as little about his character?

The film is filled with cliched sequences (slow-mo shots of attractive girls with "sexy music" overlaid), unbelievable behavior from many characters, non-convincing acting from most of the cast, and an unnecessarily accelerated pacing.

FURTHERMORE: This film's portrayal of Americans suggests neither the script writers, nor the actors, nor the director have ever actually been to the United States or interacted with Americans. Every American in the film is portrayed as racist towards Mexicans (EVERY American), but anyone who lives or has been to America should know that the type of racism (open, outlandish, proud) portrayed in the movie is virtually non-existent in the US. Americans certainly do say racist things (like every nationality of people), but outright racist statements (i.e. "you beaner!" or "you must be the gardener!") made in public and/or to the face of the minorities in question are exceedingly rare. In my 30 years of living in America I have only seen that behavior a handful of times and it was not done in an off-the-cuff way like it is in the movie, but was done for the purpose of insulting and angering, like immediately prior to a fight. Open racial hostility is just not common in the US, and the few times it does happen it is usually met with extreme pushback.

Worst of all, the movie was entirely predictable. I was able to see every twist coming nearly 30 minutes before it was revealed. All in all, this movie was not worth the $5 rental fee nor the time it took to watch it. I wouldn't bother watching it unless you have absolutely nothing better to do. That being said, it wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen, so I guess it could've been worse.