Man let's hope i don't unroll that much next time. With your blessing let's start with one of the fixtures that might be recurrent to bump the board a little, this one very a bit partizan due to heavy bias for my region, which is quite obscure, and also to fling manure at the insectoid fools down under in the south and capital, because if i don't i won't feel at ease when asked. I apologize in advance.
While the comments need to be focused on the movie with some general info of the director, a common trend that needs to be pointed out in Mexico's cinema is the mostly communist/socialist-friendly cast members (activists) and a rampant amount of them from the capital city after the 60's; i have my theories for the former (highly divided investment groups/producing houses) but nothing concrete, yet these leak into many portrayals and script changes with a couple of times coming in deep contrast with the subject and/or local culture at hand. I will use this to gauge the fling-o-meter at the end, although many can be just pointed to bad/insufficient acting; I will be too critical about it so i also apologize for it.
That said here we have 1991's El Patrullero aka The Highway Patrolman, directed by the crazed and surprisingly settled down Alex Cox from Repo Man, Sid & Nancy and Walker fame, film shot on location in the north/northwestern region by Miguel Garzón (Rojo Amanecer, fucking Llamenme Mike) starring the scarred manlet Roberto Sosa as the titular, Bruno Bichir (they are 3 brothers from capital city, this is the manlet one) Zaide Gutiérrez as a northern rich girl and Pedro Armendariz Jr. on a small supporting role.
The movie goes about a freshly graduated and idealistic federal highway patrolman being assigned to "a hell spot", an usual normal town in the northern region, and the subsequent path to dehumanizing himself (more so) and face the bribe life. He works as an honest guy but the idyosincratic nature of the community (who despise cops, foreigners and civil servants overall) makes his work hard, coupled with the national sickness of government risk jobs being the lower paid ones and highly nepotistic attitudes from above our boy here succumbs to the pressure, but as the narrative goes on we are clearly told bad stuff happens to bad people. In the end our director jumps in the realm of surrealism like in Walker and things end up working for the lawman.
The project starts with a quick rundown of our characters, Officer Rojas and Officer Anibal, 2 southern fellas who display all the archetypical flaws of a person from down there (southern-centric zealotry, extreme suspiciousness/douchebaggery towards americans/europeans, backhanded behaviour, religious yet insidious) but usually these are bitterly displayed in cinema as good things, seen as intellgent and patriotic displays. But out of nowhere our protag marries the rich girl in the small town after she goes directly to his pants, then starts working as a sincere do-gooder, which builds the atmosphere simply into a power wet dream from someone not from around, this might've spooked tons of viewers (perhaps also reason why it has a poor reputation locally and why i downloaded it), but half an hour in things start getting interesting: Both cops are seen as overly corrupt, the romance ended up being a one-sided convenience marriage to pay for her ranch's tools via bribe/contraband money, man also cheats all the time, also gets in the thin line with weed smugglers.
These actions make the pseudo-man recapacitate his actions which leads to the (even more) fantasy-realm second part of the movie, which jumps into the detective/moral trip genre along with the surrealist world of Alex Cox A fed, i mean a federal officer, starts doing his job as a cop due to grief, becomes clean, avenges his partner by catching bad guys and lives a happy marriage ever after while supporting his trusted ex-prostitue lady friend. Also implicitly turns into a drug runner in the very end?
A very Hollywoodesque/Chilango turn of events, at the start it was supposed to be like that until you get into the real thing but sadly it degrades again to please someone, not the public because Cox is a well known maverick. Originally this was going to be an american movie but Alex got blacklisted for being a socialist but also the kind of the ones who whine about the top 1% and also name names, hence why the patrolman attire, weaponry and range of activities in the movie is actually american-fashioned, to avoid vexing the local government the production even invented the patrolman company image and academy but also some ironic billboards which come as anti-tax. The project in its 3 phases never loses sign of the decadence and vices of the police corporation and their ill-interactions with the enviroment so it should be commended for degeneracy consistency.
It's a decent but quite off film about just that, a Highway Patrolman, at least the clean cinematography perfectly portrays the harsh light in the arid region which isn't seen much (exposure value has to be tuned down a step or 2 due to direct light all over the place, which gives place to well-lit environments but shiny reflections and overly strong shadows) also the protagonist did a great job; i do have a dislike on the subtitles when i was peeking at them, all trace of ethnic slurs towards the cops and mentions of drug cartels (mentioned as contrabandists instead) were cleaned giving a much more tame atmosphere for a non-speako-spanish viewer, along with most drug runners being portrayed as american (which is as ridiculous as the rich ranch girl marrying a southern civil servant), still Alex Cox and the peruvian scriptwriter gave a lot of texture with local jokes like the antagonist's truck having Sinaloa plates (along with the directors' audio commentaries about how cops hated the thing and ticketed/asked the staff for bribes in the middle of filming also much of the casting being commies due Cox watching mexican commie movies) but these details quickly fade with the very poor work on accents by most of the main cast that were/should've been assigned one (Armendariz and Zaide are the only ones who pull it out).
Can't blame an englishman and a peruvian for this as the casting crew were an insidious capital city philosophy student and another peruvian... you know what i think i can. 3 oil sweaty tacos with cold lettuce and homemade sauce out of 5 because the camera work, the setting and the main protagonist with 2 small supporting roles are quite up to goodness, but the lack of the other 2 tacos, namely the bizarre script phases and character consistency, bogged this down by quite a lot. I wrote a heap ton too because i'm on the edge that i don't think those 3 aspects are worth revisiting this movie so might as well give all the details after hearing the audio commentary to settle it, although i'm very curious about the movie being produced solely by the japanese... now that's a better story.