Chicuarotes – first look review

Leaf­ing through the back cat­a­logue of Gael Gar­cía Bernal reveals a cacoph­o­ny of wit, free­wheel­ing youth and crime capers from kids who would trip over their own shoelaces before tying togeth­er a suc­cess­ful plan. The fire­crack­er actor with the boy­ish smile has amassed an impres­sive oeu­vre, undo­ing con­ven­tions of bud­dy com­e­dy and pet­ty urban crime. It’s an immense shame, then, that when he’s behind the cam­era and not in front of it, this suc­cess crum­bles and shows lit­tle rea­son to play along.

Chicuarotes cen­tres on two clowns look­ing for a quick and fast route to suc­cess. They’re rest­less teen boys, wav­ing guns when their sketch rou­tines don’t amass the cash they think they deserve. They are Cagalera and Molote­co, best friends from work­ing-class homes who want to get out and get rich. The sim­ple premise offers as much poten­tial as any­thing Bernal has starred in before, but the sto­ry that unfolds is lack­ing any of the actor’s charis­ma, and only deliv­ers mis­guid­ed melodrama.

It’s dif­fi­cult to avoid com­par­isons to oth­er titles in the canon of this genre, because Chicuarotes spends too much time pay­ing homage to what the boys want, rather than giv­ing any com­pas­sion to who they already are. Their moral com­pass is fog­gy: Cagalera defends his sis­ter but also belit­tles her; his moth­er is abused by her new part­ner but is only grant­ed half-heart­ed and over-baked redemp­tion; an unnec­es­sary kid­nap­ping turns cru­el and saves no one; attempt­ed rape is used as a gris­ly tool for unsuc­cess­ful blackmail.

Bernal nev­er quite cross­es the line into exploita­tive mate­r­i­al, but the small sliv­ers of empa­thy are sug­ar-coat­ed by an over­bear­ing sound­track, mak­ing insis­tent attempts to direct mood in con­fus­ing ways. The direc­tor nev­er fades from view, as he rel­ish­es styl­is­tic emphases in lieu of con­vinc­ing storytelling.

The deci­sive moments of Chicuarotes leave a sour taste. While the film sets out to give con­trol to the pair of rene­gade crim­i­nals, it lacks cred­i­bil­i­ty in the way it presents the idea that teenagers might learn from their mis­takes, or that they could ever be afford­ed bet­ter judge­ment to begin with. Their moti­va­tions shoul­der resent­ment from the begin­ning, as the mis­sion is always defen­sive­ly hos­tile instead of gal­vanis­ing of inno­v­a­tive. These kids lack the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of Y Tu Mamá Tam­bién or the con­vic­tion of Amores Per­ros and fail to bring much heart to their own sto­ry. Clown­ing around is all well and good, until some­one gets hurt.