Eight Out of Ten (Ocho de Cada Diez)
According to the opening crawl, the murder rate during Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year stretch as Mexico’s President was such that in the time it takes to watch the movie, six people would have died. The set-up continues to tempt: we observe from a distance as Aurelio’s (Noé Hernández) son is shot, gangland-style, in Holy Trinity Plaza. (The cops classify it as a drug deal gone bad, but Dad swears his son wasn’t pushing.) Aurelio goes by the nickname “Faces.” That’s rich, considering the only times his glum demeanor brightens are a brief moment spent in the presence of his granddaughter and when he’s high on crack. We are no clearer as to why Aurelio’s wife exiled her husband than we are why it took so long for the textile worker to return to the crime scene for eyewitness accounts. A father grieving the loss of a son and the prostitute next door (Daniela Schmidt) looking for her daughter make for a compelling couple — until he becomes her best customer. To help make his point — and clumsily foreshadow the inevitably violent outcome — writer-director Sergio Umansky Brener intersperses surveillance footage of at least a half-dozen explicit shootings. And not since <em>Dragnet</em> has a cop delivered a sterner dressing-down than the one Aurelio receives. — Scott Marks