THE “WORLD”’S OPINION – MUST SEE
The second feature film by David Zonana (also author of the screenplay) is part of a nihilistic tradition which seems to nourish, today, a certain Mexican cinema with films like those by Amat Escalante or Michel Franco, moreover co-producer of the film.
A young man, Luis Nunez Rosales, enrolled in a military high school so he could help his diabetic mother get treatment. He will have to endure all the humiliations and bullying of a cadet aspiring officer before finding himself involved in the dangerous games of gang crime.
Dream sequences
Like other films tackling such a milieu, Heroic enjoys comparing the cinematographic staging with that, consubstantial with the confinement of bodies, embodied by the military institution and its rituals.
The film is, however, much more than that, mixing numerous themes (the fate of the Indian minority in Mexico, the painting of an essentially violent society) and allowing itself to insert various dreamlike sequences touching on a form of surrealism. Such profusion somewhat confuses a spectator who is regularly shaken, however, by moments of quite surprising psychological and physical brutality. A very dark film.
Mexican film by David Zonana. With Santiago Sandoval Carbajal, Fernando Cuautle, Esteban Caicedo (1h28).