City of M (2000)

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

This is a shallow movie that wants to be a realistic satire and scathing comment of Lima and Peruvian society. However it just comes across as one of the lesser soap operas produced by Luis Llosa. The dialog was written by posers. The climax and the epilogue are just plain stupid. The acting was amateur at best. The supposed depiction of poverty is one that obviously comes from upper-middle-class people, and racially it is far from realistic. The characters reminded me more of the snobs in Lima who like to pretend they are tough by dressing in $100 headbanger outfits and having fights outside a snob mall. They would have been beaten up in nanoseconds by the real street criminals. Check "Tinta Roja" or "Dias de Santiago" for a more realistic Lima.

I picked this movie up because it sounded like a pretty decent flick, and I've always been a fan of Foreign films. However, for someone who likes movies, I was surprised at how much I hate, hate, HATED this movie.Although it does aim to expose the lives of young, lowerclass men in Lima, and to an extent it does succeeed, the characters are hopelessly shallow and the audience winds up having absolutely no feelings whatsoever for them.Although the story chiefly revolves around M, he rarely ever speaks, and his dialouge is, at best, amazingly dry and dull.*** Warning: Some small spoilers ***Basically, the story revolves around a young man named M who has been searching for jobs, but without success (He does gain employment twice, but quits because they're "not for him", when you're poor, the last option you have is to be picky). Some amount of time is spent with his friends, who's idea of "fun" is to rape a little 14 year old, steal crappy tires off a piece of shit car for a dime sack of weed, and several other slightly retarded activities.M's friend comesup with a plan to make $25,000 a piece and move to the US by running Cocaine to Miami. When the drug lord gives them a job, we're treated to an extremely lame scene of the three friends buying clothes at the mall with some music playing in the background. We see them trying different clothes on like little girls given $200 to shop, get there hair cut, and then strutting off looking like slick gangsters (one character, Carlos, will from this point on wear sunglasses ALWAYS... even at night).The day before they leave, the leader of the group leaves to speak with the drug lord, leaving M and his friend to be dumb. They party up, take several samples of the drugs they're suppose to run, and break into thier old school, acting like animals and smashing everything in sight.The movie ends when M tries calling his girlfriend, who hangs up on him. The friends then proceed to set the pay phone on fire, which brings out a bunch of kids and some old man with gun. M and Carlos' friend in charge of the drug run shows up on his motorcycle and wants them to leave with him now. Then he takes off by himself, and gets shot by that old man. The police show up and arrest M and his friends (but not the man who shot the guy) and cover thier dead friend up with newspapers as music plays and it fades to credits.**** End Spoiler ****I even watched this movie a second time, hoping to see some subtle, redeeming factor for it, but I did not. A complete waste of 102 minutes. Although I must give it credit for being straightforward and not shying away from disturbing elements, the casting, acting, and overall direction still leaves much, much, much to be desired.IMHO, if you're interested in a movie that explores the issues this one was suppose to, go rent City of God (Cidade de Deus) instead. Avoid this trash at all costs! You have been warned!!

*may* contain a *few* spoilers in order to evaluate film.Director Felipe Degregori presents a pseudo-documentary of a Lima youth's descent into a life of crime. City of "M" starts out promising with "M" (Santiago Magill) seeking employment and making friends with 15 year old neighbor Karina (Melania Urbina) who shares the same apartment building. But M soon becomes frustrated in his lack of prospects and abandons efforts to seek legitimate employment, instead deciding to deliver cocaine to Miami for a friend. Other members of the cast include M's friends and cohorts in crime, "Coyote", (Jorge Madureno) "Pacho" (Christian Meirer) and girlfriend Sandra (Gianello Negra).The movie starts out with an engrossing plot, focusing on "M" and his relationships with both Sandra and Karina, but soon looses its continuity and characters and subplots are never fully developed or left hanging. The character of Karina, who helps him find employment, disappointingly disappears once "M" agrees to deliver drugs. "M"'s motivation, or what causes him to drop out of society, is never really explored in any depth. There's no real background or reason given for his descent into crime other than his failure to find employment. Evidently, director Degregori feels that's enough. The grittiness of Lima's shantytowns comes through, and the characters perform in a mindless, unmotivated way: much like hoodlums found in Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange". "M", however, is somehow different from his cohorts because he has a conscience. He doesn't show the same pathological tendency toward cruelty or petty crime that his friends do. The scene where they are eating the cat was incredibly gross and distastful(and also unbelievable that they would do this--they aren't starving to death, after all). Once "M" has decided to smuggle drugs and the movie shifts focus from him to ironing out the details of drug smuggling, the movie stalls, then picks up speed again just toward the end. But the focus is no longer on "M", only on the group and what they do.Coyote and Pacho are juvenile delinquents but the film treats them and their actions in a superficial manner. There is only one scene in the whole movie to indicate that "M" has a conscience and is somehow different from his cohorts. If poverty is the driving force behind these criminals, then director Degregori doesn't show it.The biggest disappointment is the ending which quickly fizzles out after slowly building up tension in the last 30 minutes or so of the movie. There's no resolution to the film at the end, just a disjointed, unsatisfying finish which leaves the viewer up in the air as to its conclusion. In order to tie up loose ends, the director offers post-scripts to each character's fate as the movie ends.City of "M" does have redeeming value as a portrait of Peruvian youth gone haywire, though there's ultimately little resolution.

Ciudad de M succeeds in many levels, especially the script which starts clumsily but then takes us through a dark trip with the forgotten youth of Lima. The main problem of the movie is its casting which would have been much better had the director chosen someone less white and more peruvian to play the part of M. Magill is a good actor, however he does not fit the image of a low class bum in a city like Lima. The plot is straightforward, and the dialogue (though full of cuss words) brought me back to the Lima of the 90's. I liked the cinematography and the fact that the only tried to show the ugly side of a metropolis like Lima. Definitely worth the wait and the time