La perdición de los hombres (2000)

User Rating:

7.1/10   

Director:

Arturo Ripstein

Writer:

Paz Alicia Garciadiego (writer)

Release Date:

8 November 2000 (Spain)

Genre:

Comedy | Crime | Drama

Plot:

Two men jump out from behind some cacti and beat a man over the head with a rock. They then take the body to the dead man's hut...

Plot Keywords:

Police Station | Baseball | Corpse | Radio | Mexico

Awards:

5 wins

Cast

Patricia Reyes Spíndola
Rafael Inclán
Luis Felipe Tovar
Carlos Chávez
Alejandra Montoya
Marco Zapata
Leticia Valenzuela
Osami Kawano
Eligio Meléndez
Ernesto Yáñez

Also Known As:

The Ruination of Men (International: English title)

Runtime:

106 min

Country:

Mexico | Spain

Language:

Spanish

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Australia:M | Spain:13

Company:

Canal+ España

If he doesn't do it...then who???

Arturo Ripstein is as critisized in mexico as oliver stone in the us...people hate his movies...usually for reasons that have more to do with him than with the movies themselves...

Since in the last five years mexico has started to produce films that are usually pretty light comedies, or smart comedies...or the hip movie of the moment Amores Perros, a deep, terrific drama about love in the city...critics are now turning their backs on ripstein, who keeps being the best director in mexico...

the reason they talk so much rubbish about him is that his movies are inhabitated by pathetic, sordid and often loser characters with no chance of escape or redemption...critics in mexico think, or tend to believe this a direct critic to mexican society...when this is actually a statement about certain type of persons in geenral, not only mexican...ripstein has a big influence from lUIS bUÑUEL. he worked for the master as an assistant director in his youth, and learned a lot from him...his films can be called Buñuelistic...only they are often more crude than the movies from the spanish director...

Remembering Ripstein's last films: Principio y Fin (a three hour drama with not even a smile for the audience), Profundo Carmesí (a serial killer couple story with all the gore but none of the glamour), and El Evangelio de las Maravillas (not as good, but incredibly weird story about a religious comune in which people learn everything from the movies), you get an idea of what you're up with this one, his self-proclaimed "first" attemp to "comedy"----VERY DARK, very acid comedy, let me say...

The film is shot in black and white and tells a very simple story about a couple of ranchers killing another one over a motive so ridicoulus you wouldn't believe it unless you weren't seeing this movie...in which, by the way...you're supposed to laugh...

The achievements of the film are simple: you get the joke, you don't laugh, but you get it...you don't get bored...you believe the outrageous storyline...you get absorved by it for hours after it's over...it's not ripstein's best work, but it's not as bad as mexican critics are saying...and with all those mexican filmmakers making comedies aobut yuppies, love stories a la kieslowski, political comedias and with movies as terribly filmed as Escrito ene l Cuerpo de la Noche, by Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, so theatrical and unchalleging cinematographicaly...who will make the surreal movies in mexico?? who will keep portraying the trash??? because wake up people, we have trash here too!!! Ripstein can say that!!!