Review of The Zone (2007) by Bruno C — 21 Sep 2008

Rodrigo Plá, Rodrigo Plá....I saw his second film, Desierto Adentro, recently at a film festival, which had it's merits but was so damn depressing. And he did it again, I felt the conclusion of his debut film, La Zona, also ended up being a very bleak ending to a social commentary sort of film....

La Zona can be described as representing a microcosm of Mexico City...though really a lot of (urban) Mexico is reflected in this movie...of ever widening social stratification with an enclosed space, of the creation of walled communities, fear of escalating crime...

What we have here is a gated community with high end private security...when it gets breached one night due to an accident, a couple young guys working at an adjacent junkyard/mechanic shop hop the wall to break in one of the homes of La Zona...which of course ends up being a botched job since it wasn't planned, two of the guys are killed while the youngest of the group escapes within the confines of the gated neighborhood, whereabouts unknown to anyone for a while.

This ends up being a new, twisted take on a "small town takes care of their own" kinda story...the community took up their own arms to kill those couple of intruders, and want to keep the police out of it for obvious reasons of protecting the person that actually did the killing as well as keeping out police corruption/ineptitude from "polluting" their perfect little high tech secure world...which the residents try to do by bribing the police lieutenant that shows up when shots are fired and police are called...though turns out he ends up being a bit of a straight-edge and wants to know what's being covered up.

The huge twist here is that the "criminal" on the run ends up being the one who needs to fear for his life from these upper class citizens of this utopia. Not only is there social commentary being made about Mexico here, but the film does a good job at examining human nature, at unveiling "good decent folk" being just as dangerous as those purported "dregs of society".

I don't want to give away too much...the plot is all pretty standard, the dialog a bit hokey though I think intentionally so, as a jab at the Mexican "fresas", but acting was decent to good, very slick look for the design, editing, and cinematography. More interesting for the director/writer was the message here, on our insecure nature and how dangerous it can be, how walls only perpetuate the problems of society.

A very impressive debut for Plá...it had the tone of a good tv-movie from the US and certainly had some plotting problems...I overlooked them due to the bigger scope the film was achieving. My only gripe would be that Plá and his co-writer didn't go far enough, in really making some pointed critiques of the class problems Mexico has, and to maybe make larger links to relevant international problems (like between the US and Mexico and another wall that our buddy Bush wants to build) involving culture/class clash, security, and the barbarism of human nature.