Friday, August 5, 2011

Movie Review: In A Better Life, Worthiness Is a Vice

It 'hard work to make good movies, people are just trying to do the right thing, especially if you do not seem to be little risk of harming him. Where's the drama? A better life, Chris Weitz presents Carlos, a Mexican father and an illegal immigrant, that usually the rich gardens of Los Angelenos his teenage son. Weitz challenge is to make a man more than any man Carlos. Weitz does not succeed completely, perhaps because the problem is a problem with the movies too often, the merit of the film is tied up his vice president.

Carlos played with great dignity formidable Demian Bichir, a recurring player in the weeds, which was a hard Fidel Castro in Che, Steven Soderbergh. Unshaven, with dirt under their fingernails, Carlos is a single parent, gardener, and a sacrifice, day Saint whose only fault is his generosity to strangers and his teenage son Babyfaced, Luis. Like Luis, José Julián young actor is less convincing as a nice guy who could not understand the sacrifice of his father. The film won the distance between father and son Americanized, but Julian does not seem quite there. At first, her feeling disconnected purpose: Luis, naive and sheltered by his father, gets just for being cute, but it is increasingly clear is a defect of character and actor.

Carlos is trying to update their lives borrow money to buy their own trucks groundskeeping - but when it does, it has been stolen. Luis groped in her neighborhood the gangbangers, then he and his father, Finding a car in a sort of watered-down riffs and The Bicycle Thief. The film establishes that there is no time for the life of Carlos, but the work, the last of which are frivolous pursuits as her son. So we know Carlos mainly work - and we discover what we already knew - that it is a sacrifice, hard-working, decent and generous to a fault. Some details, in particular - a single action or unexpected - could have made more credible. Bichir, despite the presence of Carlos safe has never been more than the idea of ​​a man we should admire. And 'so emotional.

Weitz is telling the truth, and not to say oblique. His story is a simple parable, and the deliberate stimulation and increased score by Alexandre Desplat give the film the impression of a modern myth. With the release of his movie and supernatural New Moon The Golden Compass, Weitz does not avoid the sense of morality primitive black and white, either. Carlos is a good man, surrounded by leaves: tatted of gangsters and thieves, weak men. His justice is not in doubt. That means not much else is, either.


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