Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

Leftbanker "Everybody wants respect," Quintero. Maybe, but most normal humans have a vastly different definition of this word than the violent morons running loose in Mexico and those who attempt to immortalize them with lousy music.Yet another sad testament to the downfall of Mexico, at least great swaths of it under the control of the drug cartels in which the police are afraid to leave their posts and normal citizens barely have any chance at a life.Before anyone becomes too critical of Quintero, the knucklehead singer of narco-corridos, just think of all of the moronic middle class kids in America who listen to gansta rap and wear Scarface t-shirts. Then you have to keep in mind that many of the guns used in the horrific killings across our border came from the good old U.S. of A. With that said, this kid s particularly stupid and I wish that he could see first-hand just a bit of the violence he glorifies with his crappy music.Besides the damage done by the avalanche of homicides in recent years it would be impossible to calculate the destruction of the values of perhaps millions of Mexican men who have always been terrified of their own lack of masculinity, something almost absent in Spanish men where being a "tough guy" will get you absolutely nowhere.

Mike B A sobering look at the narco crime culture – and in particular how it has impacted the city of Jaurez near the U.S. border.There is a lot of very disturbing film footage so be prepared. The drug gangs use extreme violence to enforce their codes. It is symptomatic of a decaying society when law enforcement officers are the targets of drug gangs. Another symptom illustrated towards the end of the documentary is when law enforcement refuses to investigate crimes – and then conversely investigates police officers reporting the crime. There are obviously strong connections between the police and narco gangs. One book I read (El Narco by Ioan Grillo) discusses how parts of Mexico, more so in the north, are becoming warlord states – run by different cartels – who compete violently with each other in cities like Juarez. There is a distinct sense of this societal breakdown in this film.Another aspect of the film is the portrayal of an American, of Mexican origins, who makes his living singing songs in Spanish of narco culture and violence. How far does one go to endorse the dark side? I found this guy disturbing from a moral point of view. I was wondering, during his visit to Mexico, what he would have done, if the drug dealers he met, had asked him to be a mule and transport drugs to the U.S.He is in stark contrast to the woman who literally screams at her fellow countrymen to do something and stop the violence after her son was killed.Definitely not a neutral film about the escalating events in Mexico.

Raven-1969 "It smells of blood and death, and 50 meters from here, across the border, no one wants to know what happens, and they shut their eyes. I miss the Juarez where I grew up, where I played. Will it return again? What is the limit? Why go on? But at the same time, here I am, in my beloved Juarez." Another scary-wacky documentary along the lines of the "Act of Killing" from Indonesia. The truth is indeed stranger than fiction. 60,000 dead in Mexico since 2006. It is all taking place so near to the U.S., yet so far away from consciousness for many. Looking across the border recently from El Paso, I tried to imagine what it was like in Juarez. I did not imagine such insanity; palace style graveyards for dealers, broken systems for justice and law enforcement, the perverse glorification of the violence, the extremes people will go to in order to survive, . . .

celr Every American should see this film, even though I think the 'values' it expresses are downright evil. People should see it just to be warned about this disease of violence and murder that is metastasizing on our southern border. As documentary cinema it's pretty good; it follows certain characters who have an intimate involvement of the drug culture and drug trade. There is no narration, just interviews with essentially two main players: one a Mexican CSI investigator, and the other a morally ambiguous songwriter who specializes in 'narcocorridos', songs about the Mexican drug trade and the carnage that goes with it. Narcocorridos exploit sensational stories of murder and violence, naming real events, real drug lords and real victims, and generally casting them in a heroic aura which is far better than these criminal scumbags deserve. Corridos, songs which tell stories, are a venerable tradition in Mexican folk music. Traditionally they have a sweet, lyrical quality, telling tales of Pancho Villa or the revenge of jilted lovers and the exploits of famous bandits. Of late the corrido has taken a darker turn, celebrating the nihilistic deeds and deaths of narcotraficantes and in general glorifying and promoting the culture of trafficking and murder. For this reason narcocorridos have been banned in Mexico as an incitement to violence. And, unavoidably, since the songs often name players, dates and locations the bands themselves become partisans in the drug wars and have become too often the victims of the mayhem they celebrate. The songwriter interviewed in this documentary lives in California and makes his money off the public's fascination with the horrors of the drug trade. His band features, along with the traditional instruments like tuba and accordion, a bazooka, which is shown but not, we must hope, played on stage. Gone are the bittersweet sounds of Los Alegres de Teran or even Los Cadetes de Linares and instead we have musicians with attitude. They seem to be really good musicians but their music is drowned out by the attitude. On the other hand, we also follow a young policeman whose job is to collect forensic evidence from crime scenes after the shootouts between rival gangs. This often involves severed body parts strewn conspicuously about the neighborhood as a message to the other guys. It's an awful, thankless, job because few of the murders are solved and the corruption of the Mexican authorities is epic. He is careful, dedicated and in danger. Policemen in the northern states are killed on a regular basis. This fellow represents the best of Mexican manhood, unlike the locos you see posing with their pistols and their AKs. You get to see what he's up against. He is the real hero, but is anybody going to write a corrido about him? The problem with the drug culture is that is isn't actually a culture, with its traditional values. It is instead the absence of values, the absence of culture, a black hole that threatens to swallow light itself. Santa Muerte is not a real saint. She is the anti-saint. Near the end we see an entire cemetery where the rich drug dealers go when they die (seldom of natural causes). Each mausoleum is like a big ornate church with domes and cupolas and there looks to be a whole city of them. And the windows are glazed with bulletproof glass. The drug culture becomes a parody of itself.