"El Bufalo de la Noche" is one of those cases when you know the thing is going to be bad after some 20 minutes of watching and for some odd reasons you keep going just to see how worse it can get. There's a magnet in there that pulls you in, leaving you hooked for brief instants, but most of the time you'll be off, mind going other places and you probably fall asleep time and time again (like I did). If the purpose of such "movie" is to thrill and make us involved with the "plot" keeping us suspenseful why insisting in presenting a slow paced drama that goes nowhere? It's most gripping element is also the most gratuitous, most random and completely pointless: the sex scenes. That's why you stay awake while watching this.
The director has claimed in interviews that "The Night Buffalo" was all about portraying two of the most worrying (and overlooked) problems of in Mexico, the young schizophrenics and young suicidal, a social problem with a high rating in the country. They needed to be visible in the movies one day. Writer Guillermo Arriaga (WHY? You have amazing scripts out there, why invest time in writing stuff like this?) with this novel and screenplay seemed to be looking in other direction, conceiving this as a sort of psychological thriller embedded in sex and strangeness disguised as plot twists. The most I could get was this: it revolves around Manuel (Diego Luna) and the way he deals with the suicide of his friend Gregorio (Gabriel González), a schizophrenic whose life has spiralled out of control after finding out that his girlfriend (Liz Gallardo) was cheating on him with Manuel. Most of the time is centered on Manuel's flashbacks about their friendship, we get the sense that something is about to go very wrong between both since Manuel already see the signs that Gregorio is getting more insane each day goes by; and it's also centered in the things Gregorio left behind, a box with objects and one more mystery to be solved by the protagonist.
Somehow the biggest concern of the movie revolves in the explicit sex scenes, and it goes between Manuel and Tania, Gregorio's girlfriend, and also with Gregorio's sister. Actors are comfortable in doing those, Diego is always a treat while being part of those and there's plenty of him if you know what I mean (el guapo es muy caliente!), the scenes were greatly filmed (except the car scene which was very weird) but they're pointless to the movie's cause. And it's a severe bad case of movies/characters confusing sex with love. I remember when love was something that involved action and not just sticking sexual members into each other. He says he loves Tania more than his friend did, but at no point such was presented, it's just infatuation, the urgency of wanting to be with the other. For what? Those characters aren't described sufficiently or interesting enough so we can believe they're in love with each other, or that they have something special to share.
The mystery, the delusions, the clues, the so-called buffalo of the night, the whispered voices in the night...who cares? It's so dull and poorly put, ultimately you're there for nothing, less than nothing. Pathetic. I won't say it was bad acted. Luna was decent, but his character was so lifeless, charmless yet all the girls got the hots for him; González steals the show from him in his brief scenes, very believable as someone who is losing his mind but even so he managed to understand that he couldn't trust his best friend. I would have enjoyed a frightening confront between both instead of each scaring women on their own, in two separate occasions towards the conclusion.
There's very little gain from "The Night Buffalo", so why bother? Unless you're only in it for the exciting scenes which are not all that exciting. As for the pinhead who put this film as from the adult genre on this website, please go watch real adult movies before updating stuff in here. "The Brown Bunny" had way more things - real, by the way - than this movie and still isn't categorized as such. If you go a step forward and end up buying this, at least it'll be useful as a replacement for sleeping pills. I pity Luna and Arriaga fans for falling into this entrapment. They are great but not in here. 3/10
