Heli
John
Andrews
Heli
is a slow and tedious portrayal of the life of a young man named
Heli. Brutal and raw, the film peels the emotions and disgust out of
you. The film holds back nothing from its scenes full of torture.
Gruesome barely begins to describe the images you see.
Technically
speaking, the movie was well done, with long, wide lens shots of the
wilderness and deserts of Mexico. But besides the camera work and
acting, the narrative was weak and empty.
The
story begins with two men tied up and bleeding in the bed of a truck
with their captors holding them down. The tone for the movie is set
immediately when one of the men is tossed off a bridge, and hung.
Escalante continues with the brutality as Beto, Estela's older
boyfriend who is training to be a policeman, is forced to roll
through his own puke and held over a latrine while being yelled at.
To
disturb you even further, Estela, who I would presume to be around 12
years old, makes out with Beto, 17 years in the movie but looks
older. The age difference may be a common practice in Mexico, but is
off-putting from an outside perspective. Estela skips school to be
with Beto. Savagery continues as Beto shoots a dog to discover a
stash of cocaine. Estela sneaks out at night to help Beto hide the
cocaine that he found in the water tank for the family house. When
Heli discovers the drugs, having clogged the water pipes, he discards
them, thinking the problem is resolved.
Heli
and Estela's father is sitting in the house alone drinking a soda
when the door gets bashed in. In defense he gets a couple shots off
from the family rifle, but he is mowed down by men in black SWAT
attire. We learn quickly that these men are of a drug cartel whose
stash of cocaine has recently gone missing. Beto and Heli are also
taken.
The
most difficult scene to the movie is the torture scene. I have never
seen more people walk of a movie than this. As children and Heli look
on, Beto is beaten with a wooden paddle across his back while strung
up from the ceiling. The captors hand off the paddle to one of the
boys in the room and the beating continues. Heli shows no emotion but
closes his eyes and can only listen. As you sit there wondering how
they pulled off this torture on camera without actually doing it,
another man pulls down Beto's pants, squirts something on his
privates and lights them on fire. As you sit and watch Beto burn and
scream, you can only think of how in the world this is being shown in
a movie. Though there is no way it was actually done, the effects and
technique were done well enough to keep you in the moment and not
wonder how, but only why they would show this.
Still
shots and long takes of the characters going through the mundane
tasks of life are what this film was about to me. A coyote along the
crest of a road with the night horizon in the background. Heli taping
up a poster one handed. The father getting a soda and sitting down.
Heli biking to work. These shots help to portray the every day life
of Mexico, but they get redundant and wearisome. Though some of the
scenic shots are beautiful, it slows the pace of the movie and
creates gaps of the more lively scenes.
The
emotion wrought out of you throughout the feature is somewhat empty.
I didn't really connect with the characters at all because it is like
nothing I have ever experienced before. Though I don't doubt how that
may be something slightly common in Mexico and drug cartel areas, for
a Tennesseean it was far from mine own experiences.
The
lack of connection left me with an empty feeling towards the movie.
That and the abundance of raw cruelty shut me off from finding any
commonalities with the movie. I commend its shot composition and
cinematography, but other than that I find Heli to be lacking
in reality.
Director:
Amat Escalante
Writer:
Amat Escalante
Producer:
Jaime
Romandía
Starring:
Armando Espitia, Andrea Vergara, Linda Gonzalez, Juan Eduardo
Palacios
Run
Time: 105 minutesf
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