Bandera rota (1979) User Reviews

A nice piece of Retes' realistic cinema

[chris-810-745673 · 7/10 · 9 January 2012]

"Bandera rota" (something like "Broken Flag") has many elements of Gabriel Retes' movies, in a genre film, a thriller: beautiful presence of Tina Romero, an artistic project (a movie in this case,, furthermore, its production is stopped by money problems), critic of social, political or economical situation in contemporary Mexico from a middle class point of view and social class or ideological conflicts, for example. Retes' characters are the voice of his very personal and critical explanations of main social problems in Mexico.

The importance of movies, media in general, and possession of important information are the elements used by Retes to develop an interesting thriller. Personal interests of characters are mixed and confused with their ideologies, giving them certain profundity, enough to maintain our interest.

This is not a great movie, but has an interesting story and it is easy to watch. Dialogues are very natural with realistic intentions (specially inside the crew of filmmakers), but this realistic motif has the inconvenient of a very lazy use of the camera, a little boring. In my opinion images could've talk more.

Violence is well manage, in the exact moment and amount, also crude and realistic, with, maybe, some memorable scenes of "Bandera rota" showing a not very common face of Retes' skills.

Retes and his Complaint Vision

[treada73 · 4 July 2012]

Retes show us a doublé moral in his fourth commercial film, a powerful industrial man try to hide with the complicity of the "law" a crime of his adultery woman at any cost,in order to preserve the good name of his family ,in good agreement with public politics figures(like almost every power family in our Mexican society)they manage to disguise the case as an unjust crime, and every body happy and satisfied,if someone have a doubt that similar cases could happen in our Mexican society,please take a look to the Paulette case. In this film the victims are a group of young filmmakers who accidentally film the moment of the crime and instead of blackmail the industrial killer asking for money they require him to improve the economical condition of his workers. Retes loyal to his effective denounce style and uses it to reflect his politic vision give us a worthy film mixing character actors like Manolo Fabregas and Aaron Hernan and good Young ones like Jorge Humberto Robles, Elpidia Carrillo and Tina Romero,Retes give us a curious film but not boring and very interesting