Reviews

During the 2016 Olympics, the world attention turned to Rio. Journalists that descended on the city, were quick to point out the glaring absurdity of hosting a hugely expensive event, while dozens of thousands of the city residents live in abject poverty. But their analysis usually lacked depth, often smacked of sensationalism, and came to be known as "Drive-by journalism".

The Other Rio provides that other side of the Olympic story of Rio in rich detail. It features interviews with black residents of an abandoned building and shows their daily routine, all the while TVs with bad signal transmit Olympic events in their shabby rooms.

As on the residents put it, "I came to Rio because I wanted to see the marvelous city. But it turned out to be a big lie"

Two men meet in downtown Bogotá. One is Mañe, an older man missing a leg and the means to survive in a city that couldn't care less. The other is a "silletero", a man with a chair on his back, who carries people around for money. Their strange friendship slowly takes them to the exact place from which both tried to escape: their past. This Colombian movie originally titled "La Sombra del Caminante" is in black and white, and with its barebones production it looks at first like a student movie. But the absurdity, the dark humor and the mystery that drives the characters quickly win your attention. The end result is a movie that doesn't let you go.

The people inhabiting "Wandering Shadows" have no use for empathy and even less so solidarity. The landlord of the room which Mañe rents, a retired and often drunk army sergeant, yells at him for being late on his payments. "You are a cripple, go live in an asylum" he tells him. It's worth noting that the sergeant himself has a limp and he is walking with a cane.

A functioning government is also nowhere to be found. When Mañe comes to the labour exchange office to look for a job, he is told to pay 10,000 peso and not to worry. In return he gets a mock medical exam and a motivational speech in which the hopeful applicants are told to believe in themselves, and the job will come, as if unemployment is a mental, personal problem of the applicants rather than a structural failure that the government has to address. The government not only doesn't help, it interferes. When the man with the chair encounters policemen, they tell him he isn't allowed to work without a special permit.

The bottom line: very good movie, with great scenery shots of rural Ecuador, very good performances, especially on the part of John Leguizamo as a popular and ambitious reporter Manolo Bonilla doing a story about a notorious serial killer, and Damián Alcázar as Vinicio Cepeda, a man that by accident runs over and kills a local kid (whose brother was killed by the serial killer), and is saved by Manolo Bonilla from a lynching mob. Vinicio Cepeda wants the reporter to do a favorable story about him, and possibly, by doing so, help him get out of jail, where his life might be in danger. In exchange he offers him some information on "Monster of Babahoyo", the pedophile serial killer.

Damián Alcázar gives an incredible performance as a kind, humble, god-loving man with some uneasy, disturbing quality. The only real shortcoming of this movie, in my opinion, is that it is undeveloped. The movie could use another half a hour of plot towards the end. When the ending credits started rolling, I was a bit disappointed.

All in all, warmly recommended.