Amores Perros - Alejandro González Iñárritu - (2000)

Date watched: 6/22/11

Film:  Amores Perros

Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu

 

Oh lord.  How can I dislike this movie without being lame.

Screw it.  This movie was not great, in fact it barely borderlined on good.  It was certainly not entertaining.  And it is REALLY long.

I don't read anything about a film I haven't seen before I watch it (if it can be helped).  I had no idea of the international acclaim this movie received.

Why?  Honestly, this film is a Mexican knock-off of Babel crossed with Snatch.  It's 180 minutes spread over three acts. and the first two, truly, truly don't matter at all.  The entire film feels like an anthology. It has one student film, one pedestrian art-house film and a final, longer film that was written and filmed by a competent, but pedestrian, crew.

As I said, I read critical reviews of this film after viewing it.  It's odd, my notes seem to illuminate a similar theme to the film-writing public, just entirely opposite.  The majority of viewers seem to see the dogs in this film as representative of the loyal, noble parts of humans.

This is not a film about how dogs have the best parts of humans, this is a film about how humans have the worst parts of dogs.  This film is misogynistic in a way I have not seen in a long while.  Every man in this film (perhaps besides except for Emilio Echevarría, he is the one real strength), is a caricature of how men are no less than animals, sniffing after the mate, killing brothers to reproduce.  If you took this film as a final verdict of human kind at the rapture, we'll all be medium-well and whining about our day to other hell-bound spirits.

This is one of the most negative interpretations of the human condition I have seen on film.  It is not honest, it has an agenda.  This movie is about as true to life as a P.E.T.A. film on the manufacturing of bacon.  I am hard-pressed to find a more pessimistic film on people. 

So people kill dogs, kill brothers and randomly kill strangers due to navel-examining while fleeing other dogs trying to kill them as well.  There are far better films on what it is to be mortal.  My favorite film takes the concept, sharpens it and thrusts it back (unwelcome) into your soul.  Amores Perros simply throws up it's arms, tries to (and fails to) present some form of synchronicity, but leaves you with a ham-fisted and sloppy mess.

There were two shining points in this movie.  Emilio Echevarría was really, really good.  He actually drew me back into the movie the last thirty minutes.  This man should be a star outside of his native land.  He made me buy every line he was given and I cared more about him for the first two hours of this film than the protagonists I was having shoved in my face and being told to love like a new father with a wallet full of child snapshots.

Also, the gal who played the wrecked supermodel was wasted on this movie.

Rating: 4.3/10

Favorite bit: How no animals were harmed during the making of this film... but they totally were.

Reminded me of:

• Magnolia (minus the actual intertwining of characters)
• Snatch (minus the humor and fun)
• Babel (minus the acting, story, filming...)