City of M (2000)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Powerful

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

This is a shallow movie that wants to be a realistic satire and scathing comment of Lima and Peruvian society. However it just comes across as one of the lesser soap operas produced by Luis Llosa. The dialog was written by posers. The climax and the epilogue are just plain stupid. The acting was amateur at best. The supposed depiction of poverty is one that obviously comes from upper-middle-class people, and racially it is far from realistic. The characters reminded me more of the snobs in Lima who like to pretend they are tough by dressing in $100 headbanger outfits and having fights outside a snob mall. They would have been beaten up in nanoseconds by the real street criminals. Check "Tinta Roja" or "Dias de Santiago" for a more realistic Lima.

This is a first rate, first acted movie. The director, the novel on which the movie is based and the scriptwriter have done a superb job. It successfully portrays the "middle class" that years of violence and economic crisis have left in Peru. Nothing to do with a typical Hollywood movie: it's pure acting, imagination, sense of humor and drama. Anybody interested in knowing Perú and Lantin America and in enjoying a good piece of art should see this movie. It borrows from Latin American, US and European cinema to create an original, truly Peruvian cinematic language. Specially relevant is the top acting quality of all actors that participated in this movie.

*may* contain a *few* spoilers in order to evaluate film.Director Felipe Degregori presents a pseudo-documentary of a Lima youth's descent into a life of crime. City of "M" starts out promising with "M" (Santiago Magill) seeking employment and making friends with 15 year old neighbor Karina (Melania Urbina) who shares the same apartment building. But M soon becomes frustrated in his lack of prospects and abandons efforts to seek legitimate employment, instead deciding to deliver cocaine to Miami for a friend. Other members of the cast include M's friends and cohorts in crime, "Coyote", (Jorge Madureno) "Pacho" (Christian Meirer) and girlfriend Sandra (Gianello Negra).The movie starts out with an engrossing plot, focusing on "M" and his relationships with both Sandra and Karina, but soon looses its continuity and characters and subplots are never fully developed or left hanging. The character of Karina, who helps him find employment, disappointingly disappears once "M" agrees to deliver drugs. "M"'s motivation, or what causes him to drop out of society, is never really explored in any depth. There's no real background or reason given for his descent into crime other than his failure to find employment. Evidently, director Degregori feels that's enough. The grittiness of Lima's shantytowns comes through, and the characters perform in a mindless, unmotivated way: much like hoodlums found in Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange". "M", however, is somehow different from his cohorts because he has a conscience. He doesn't show the same pathological tendency toward cruelty or petty crime that his friends do. The scene where they are eating the cat was incredibly gross and distastful(and also unbelievable that they would do this--they aren't starving to death, after all). Once "M" has decided to smuggle drugs and the movie shifts focus from him to ironing out the details of drug smuggling, the movie stalls, then picks up speed again just toward the end. But the focus is no longer on "M", only on the group and what they do.Coyote and Pacho are juvenile delinquents but the film treats them and their actions in a superficial manner. There is only one scene in the whole movie to indicate that "M" has a conscience and is somehow different from his cohorts. If poverty is the driving force behind these criminals, then director Degregori doesn't show it.The biggest disappointment is the ending which quickly fizzles out after slowly building up tension in the last 30 minutes or so of the movie. There's no resolution to the film at the end, just a disjointed, unsatisfying finish which leaves the viewer up in the air as to its conclusion. In order to tie up loose ends, the director offers post-scripts to each character's fate as the movie ends.City of "M" does have redeeming value as a portrait of Peruvian youth gone haywire, though there's ultimately little resolution.

Ciudad de M succeeds in many levels, especially the script which starts clumsily but then takes us through a dark trip with the forgotten youth of Lima. The main problem of the movie is its casting which would have been much better had the director chosen someone less white and more peruvian to play the part of M. Magill is a good actor, however he does not fit the image of a low class bum in a city like Lima. The plot is straightforward, and the dialogue (though full of cuss words) brought me back to the Lima of the 90's. I liked the cinematography and the fact that the only tried to show the ugly side of a metropolis like Lima. Definitely worth the wait and the time