First of all,here is the trailer.

Want my opinion? Hope in to see it.

I just want to post a question. Are movies supposed to be a mirror of society or a gateway to a different place?

I hope everyone here has a good answer, because I honestly don’t have one.  For the past couple of years I have gone deep into the world of scriptwriting and movie making and I’ve found plenty, plenty of ways to tell stories, from the simple and quirky to the deep and philosophical.

And then, like hidden in there, are this movies that pretend to reflect reality and the situation in the lower classes. However, sadly, they come out with a different one every three months that it is supposed to be more “real” than the last one, and the content just becomes tedious.

This is the case of Sin Nombre, a movie that involves immigration, and the gang problem of Mexico and Central America.

(For your own personal enjoyment, please read the next couple of lines with a latin passive aggresive accent)

the movie centers in three characters.  Sayra , the daughter of a man trying to re-assemble his past in order to have a brighter future, Willy “El Casper”,a gang member that is getting tired of the street life, and “El Smiley”, the newcomer kid that will do it all to fit in his new family of misfits.

Sayra is convinced by his father to go with him to the United States to join his new family. Since they are poor and lack papers, they have to ride the train going north. Oh, yeah, the train is not for passengers so they have to sit on top of the boxes.

Sayra makes it all the way to Mexico. However stuff gets heavy when Mara Salvatrucha members El Casper,EL Smiley and Little Mago (which is the gang member) hop in.  After stealing everything from the train riders, Lil Mago tries to take advantage of Sayra but Casper defends her, killing the dude. Smiley hops off the train and swears revenge.(with the help of the rest of the gang)

And the rest of the story is pretty much a cat and mouse chase story. Which by now you have most likely figured how it ends.

So what is wrong with the movie? Nothing much really, the cinematography is fantastic. They spend good portion of the movie on trains and the shots look interesting. The story looks pretty standard, with a twist ending, and the acting is pretty okay. It’s on instant watch on netflix if you want to take a look at it

The problem is that I have seen this, way too many times. And it is quite sad to see that the mexican/latino movies that always get commercialized and/or name called always involve some form of gang violence. Blood in-Blood out, The price of the american dream, amores perros…. I can go on for hours. Just visit your local videostore in the latino section. Most likely it will be plastered with dudes with machine guns and/or fancy hats and/or plenty of tattoos. And they sell like pancakes. Pretty much gang movies for latinos are the Romantic comedies of the rest of the population.

However, most of the filmmakers interviewed say they do this movies because they want to reflect the reality of third world countries and the lower class in general. But, here comes the question again, if some dude just came out of his bad neighborhood to watch a movie, does he really want a movie that reflects his bad neighborhood?

Just trying to put it in perspective.