I enjoy going off the English path every now and then in order to see what other countries have to offer. Much of this is based on the fact that especially when it comes to large budget films, the Hollywood machine only seems to be capable of one thing: Superhero films with basically the exact same storyline.
I probably wouldn't have ever heard of this film had a friend not put it on our Plex server, but it seemed interesting enough and well, from an entertainment perspective it is interesting enough. However, as I will kind of showcase below, it is absolutely filled with plot devices that are really annoying when someone would like their films to have at least some level of realism.
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The film starts out pretty great as we are treated to 5 men in a car talking about their weekend they are spending together and then they all of a sudden get rammed by a pickup truck that has a bunch of gangster type people on it and then they have to fight their way out of that situation. They do so with what seems to be relative ease. At this point in time we, the viewers, don't have any idea that all of the guys that were in the car going on a vacation are Mexican special forces. Then they go back in time to give us a bit of backstory.
Up to this point the film was done extremely well and it moves along nicely showcasing the difference between a specially trained soldier and just some thug with tattoos and access to weapons.
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It turns out that one of the special forces guys intervened when a woman was approaching a police station across the street from where he was having lunch with a friend, and the people he saves her from are part of a top-level cartel. He is successful in saving the women but as I would imagine is true with the cartels, they were not going to let this go so easy and they work out a way via corruption and superior numbers to go after the guy who did this. Because, and here is the first rather convenient plot point that kind of pissed me off, one of the main characters killed the father or the cartel's current leadership.
This invites questions as a viewer right away: If the cartel was aware of the fact that this guy killed their father, why wait until now to go after him? I mean, he clearly is in public on a regular basis and is known by many people, so it's not like he was impossible to find up to that point. He isn't living in secrecy like Jason Bourne.
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Instead of having gone after him many years ago the cartel sits and waits until he goes on vacation because apparently the Secretary of something or other that is high up in the government puts some sort of tracking device on the special forces guy's phone so that they will know his every move. This is also a rather convenient plot-point that annoys me. So this elite soldier knows how to protect all aspects of his life but never considers that his phone could have been compromised? Pffft!
So when they initially get attacked in the car (which is where the movie started and we eventually make our way back to) they easily handle the initial round of cartel troops that head their way. Shortly thereafter they are attacked by another round. It is at that point that they decided to retreat into the woods to retreat from the waves of cartel members that just keep coming and coming.
Now here comes the point that annoys me the most. The geographical expert in their group estimates that they are 20km from a safe house of sorts, and they are 40 km from the very large and secure military base that has hundreds of other highly-trained special forces operatives in it. So which one do they decide to go towards? Well the one that is closer of course!
While i commend the film makers for not having the really stupid "no mobile phone coverage out here" caveat built in, the elite soldiers do in fact make a phone call to a trusted team member on that special forces base but when the person on the other end of the phone answers they decide NOT to deploy a team of soldiers 40km down the road to save the trapped vacationers, but instead to meet them at the safe house. They do this in an extraordinarily slow fashion as well.
40km is not very far you guys. This is especially true when you consider that they military would not have to follow traffic laws and as is showcased later on in the film, is a distance that could be covered in a matter of minutes via helicopter. But they don't do this because the plot calls for a drawn out fight in the jungle.
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So now we have a story of a group of elite soldiers with very limited resources being hunted by a group of rather untrained thugs with unlimited resources. The action or the various skirmishes that they get into are shot well and are a lot of fun to watch, but this is unfortunately overshadowed by the complete absurd overall synopsis of what is going on here. The military base is 20 minutes away by car or 2 minutes away by air yet it takes the backup the entire night to reach them at some house they end up holed up in while wave after wave of cartel storm troopers come after them.
One particularly stupid scene comes when the super soldiers are in a cement house and they notice out the windows that the baddies have just unloaded some M-2 machine guns and if you don't know that that is it is a very high caliber weapon that can shoot through normal cement walls. So what do the super-soldiers do? They say "take cover" and then flip over sofas and wooden tables to hide behind because sofas and kitchen tables are apparently made out of armored plating in Mexico. It's just ridiculous.
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Get to the sofa!
At the very end, conveniently once again, the head of the cartel is the only remaining invader and almost all of the super soldiers have survived, instead of killing him they decide it is a good idea to have a fist fight between him and the head of the super-soldiers which of course the super soldier leader wins.
Then right as the fight finishes we hear the sound of approaching helicopters because it takes 14 hours to fly 45km in Mexican choppers.
The moral of the story is don't mess with Mexican special forces even if they are mostly unarmed and going on vacation together for some reason.
Should I watch it?
Unless you can speak Spanish I have to say that this movie will really only be applicable to a very specific type of person. I appreciate the action sequences that take place in this film (which is basically all of it from start to finish) and the cinematography is exceptional especially when you consider the relatively small budget they were dealing with. However, the story is simply pathetic and doesn't make any sense. Certain characters have plot-armor the entire way and this is pretty evident right from the start. We are not shocked when one member of the cartel just happens to survive the un-survivable because: reasons.
I suppose this could be alright for someone that appreciates good action, because this film is full of that and normally I would say that this would be fine to have on in the background while you are doing something else. Since it isn't in English, this would not be an option for me. As for having something that even approaches some semblance of a meaningful / possible story, this one simply is woefully lacking.
As in indicated in several of the pics, this film can only be legally streamed on Netflix
I saw it the other day and even in Spanish is not so good, I gave it a 6/10, still a movie I could watch once just because of the action scenes and some jokes in Spanish but yeah some stuff like hide behind a table or a couch agains that kind of caliber just stupid in any language 🤣✌️
I think it is probably worthy of a 6/10 to people who can understand it without reading it. For me, i found it extra annoying because I had to read it with my not so great eyes only to have most of the dialogue be pretty not great :)
you are not wrong, even on spanish the script at times is cringe 😅
Very good review, I was very entertained reading your review and I liked it a lot, while reading I imagined someone almost euphoric explaining the plot holes, I laughed with that HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!
I recently added it to the list to watch it later, and just a day ago I was watching a couple of scenes to see if I was convinced and you are right about the dialogues, from the little I saw, I will take the time to watch it complete although honestly when I saw the trailer I didn't have much faith in it, let's see what "surprises" me.
if you speak Spanish you might find it more entertaining than I did.
Interesting Review of this movie, I think I'll put it on my list of things to see. Thank you very much for sharing. Happy day and blessings.
Lol. I saw this on my server as well and was not tempted one bit nd looks like it was justified. You can normally tell when something is going to be terrible and this looked like the budget was in the film cover.
I'm not one to watch war movies and stuff like that, but whenever there's an entertaining one I bet on it. I think we should always give space to international productions. Every concept is unique. After all.