(re)search my Trash

<body> <div align="left"> <table border="0" cellspacing="0" width="800" cellpadding="0" height="100%"> <tr> <td width="100" rowspan="3" background="../stylepix/square.gif" valign="top">  </td> <td width="4" rowspan="3"></td> <td width="592" height="1%" valign="top">  </td> <td width="4" rowspan="3"></td> <td width="100" rowspan="3" background="../stylepix/squareright.gif" valign="top">  </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="592" valign="top" height="99%">    <p>Pedro (Roberto Sosa) has just finished police school and is given an assignement as highway patrolman on some stretch of the highway near Mexico's border to the USA, where there are smugglers and drugrunners aplenty - but Pedro is kind at heart, so usually he lets minor misdemeanours go unpunished, and he even marries Griselda (Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez), a woman he stopped due to a traffic violation.<p>... and eventually, Pedro, who scarcely makes enough money to support his family, starts taking bribes - and with more money than is good for him, he meets and falls in love with prostitute Maribel (Vanessa Bauche).<p>In a drugbust though, his leg is injured - after which he is shocked to find out that Maribel is actually hooked on drugs ... even if he himself is taking painkillers aplenty and thinks nothing of it. When drugrunners kill his best friend Anibal (Bruno Bichir) though, with him only arriving minutes too late to save him, Pedro decides to wage a one-man war against the drugrunners, and he decides to give Maribel a new, better life ... even kif that means he in the process becomes her pusher.<p>The showdown out in the desert sees Pedro outnumbered and outgunned by the drugrunners, who even blow up his car, but they are not really interested in a shootout and bet it by helicopter, and the only one Pedro can get his hands on and is forced to kill in the process is Emilio (Towi Islas), actually a friend of his who's on the wrong side of the law rather coincidently.<p>Pedro's killing of Emilio is celebrated at the police station, even if he was a friend of his, and even though with Emilio's death, it has become impossible to catch the masterminds of the organisation. But when he despite of all this is also accused of having stolen some drugs, he just quits the job, deeply disappointed, and works on the farm of his wife, while at the same time still trying to see to it that he can come up with enough money to support Maribel so she doesn't have to work as a hooker no more.<p> <p>After being blacklisted in Hollywood for making <b><a href="walker(1987).shtml">Walker</a></b>, a political farce criticizing the Nicaragua-policies of the Reagan-regime, Cox had to go to Mexico to shoot his next film, <b>El Patrullero</b> - and delivered yet another masterpiece. <b>El Patrullero</b> might be a quieter and smaller film than his previous output, but it's as intelligent and as entertaining, a film that blends comedy and drama, social satire and genre mainstays (in its own quirky way), and that refuses to give simple answers to the stories underlying questions on one hand, but not for a moment becomes heavy-handed on the other, and it's a film that presents its characters not as hero and villain, but as flawed persons, driven not necessarily by their conscience but by circumstances - which makes them as likeable as believable. Add to that a story that doesn't only focus on action setpieces but also on small, only seemingly insignificant events, superb camerawork and syampathetic direction - and you are left with one great movie.<p>Recommended. <p>  </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="592" valign="top" height="1%">  <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> currentyear = "2008"; </SCRIPT> <SCRIPT language="JavaScript" src="../scripts/endcredits.js"></SCRIPT> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> dosworsdonn(); </SCRIPT> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </body>