Ratas, ratones, rateros

rateros, is about a street level hoodlum in modern day quito, Ecuador. this moving cannonball of destruction, intersects with various people's lives, leaving mayhem and chaos in his aftermath. the guy seems to have gone on the wrong path due to personal misfortunes, like the death of his mother and is progressively getting worse. he is getting addicted to smoking cocoa, which is filmed with a gangsta cool, which is hard to beat, and almost makes me want to do the same things too. i can identify with this movie a lot, since i too was once on the wrong path like this. lying and using people came easily to me and it wasn't that i wanted to hurt them or do bad things, it was just the way the day spelled out for me.

rateros, is a lot like train spotting, the British movie about junkies. while it stays true to the emotions and reality of such a lifestyle, one could say that the protagonist is unusually lucky. such a lifestyle of drugs, using people and in this movies case, eventually progressing to killing people, can only be affected for the short term. people who live this way do not live long or live long outside of prisons.

the movie supports an ensemble cast of characters, who play their parts excellently, but angel is the centerpiece. the actor who plays him (Carlos Valencia) gave a virtual tour de force performance. he was very very good and believable down to the blackened nicotine stained lips and whinny insinuating way of street talking. the cinematography is also very good, giving a very good feel of the culture of the burgeoning metropolis, that is quito.

overall the movie is very good and another milestone in the tons of very good cinema coming out of south America, and one of the first which has put Ecuador on the map for me. i highly recommend that you watch it.

Ecuador has an almost nonexistent film industry. The country pushes out one feature every four or five years. I was intrigued by this fact, but also had low expectations as I bought my ticket at this year's Toronto film fest. But within the first few minutes I was already reeled into the lives of these characters. I can't think of one film that takes place in downtown Quito, and the place only appears on television (in Canada) when there's a major news story, a disaster, etc. But Rodents takes place in Quito's sprawling suburbs, a place most of us don't know exists. For this reason alone Rodents is worth the price of admission. On top of this it's a solid film, with fine acting, slick direction and a plot that keeps it's pace. It even delivers action and suspense -- no small feat considering the film's minimal resources. Felicidades, Quitenos!

In most of Latin America, beneath the bottom in the social scale there still live people. And a lot of those people are children. Kids without parents. With no school. Bereft of the joys of childhood. Deprived of any future. Children for whom abuse, rape and even violent death are everyday occurrences.

This view ‘from underneath the bottom' is a recurrent theme in recent Latin American cinema or in movies based on Latin American novels.

A few examples: `Capitaes da Areia' (Engl. title ‘The sandpit generals'), directed by Hall Bartlett in 1972, written by Brazilian Jorge Amado, was based on true stories about streetwise rascals in Salvador de Bahía. Another Brazilian film, `Pixote: A Lei do Mais Fraco' (Hector Babenco, 1981) revived the same theme using real abandoned kids as players, and when Fernando Ramos Da Silva, the leading actor, was actually killed in those same streets, Paulo Halm and Jose Joffily continued the saga with the sequel `Quem matou Pixote?' (‘Who killed Pixote?', 1996).

In Argentina, the recent `Pizza, birra y faso' (Adrián Caetano & Bruno Stagnaro, 1997) reformulated the subject for present day Buenos Aires, and there are two great and dreadful Colombian films (both by Víctor Gaviria): `Rodrigo D.' (Engl. title ‘Rodrigo D: no future', 1990) and `La vendedora de rosas' (1998), which painted the same motif in still darker colors.

Now a new member has added to this family of true-to-life films, about the menacing insurgence of the desperado human products that arouse from the explosive mixture of extreme poverty, social segregation and a complete lack of hope.

The 1999 Ecuadorian film `Ratas, ratones, rateros' (Engl. title ‘Rodents') has just won the Trieste Latin Film Festival (both the Grand Prix and the Opera Prima awards), after being acclaimed at the ‘Mostra' in Venice and at the Toronto Film Festival. Its author (writer/director) is Sebastián Cordero, born in Ecuador (1972) and a graduate of USC. The film was completed on a very low budget (just below the 200,000 dollars line). 35 mm. 109 min.

‘Rodents' shares with its predecessors a common and implicit wrath against social injustice, a widespread compassion for its victims, a taste for street language and vulgarisms, a tragical and hopeless film ending and a certain apocalyptic comprehension of the future.

No one can blame Cordero because of this point of view. It's quite understandable. Ecuador, a small South American country, is immersed in a deep economical crisis, has changed four governments in the last five years and is currently ranking among the most corrupt countries in the world. Therefore, there is little room for hope.

Yet Cordero stands on that last piece of hope. While Gaviria's appalling films should be considered almost docudramas, because of their extensive use of wild and improvised footage and sound, ‘Rodents' is entirely fiction. This fact allows Cordero to develop the film's subject without any trace of pamphleteer's or social reformer's speech, while giving his theme a treatment entirely free of any effete or wimpy false sympathy for the street hardened characters he depicts.

Based on reality, but reconstructed and rearranged in the mind of an artist, the film becomes a forceful condemnation of the situation it enlightens and must be considered a powerful weapon in the struggle for a better future in his country.

A standing ovation for Sebastián Cordero, a young master.

Sebastian Cordero is one of the great filmmakers of Latin America. Thanks to him, this is the first movie with several international awards such as: Best First Movie and Best Movie in The Latin America Cinema of Trieste, Italy (1999). Best Actor (Carlos Valencia) and Best First Movie in The Spanish American Film Festival of Huelva, Spain (1999). Best Editing Award in The Havana Festival (1999). A honorable mention in the Bogota Film Festival (2000). Thanks to Cordero, Ecuador is in the international spotlight. CRONICAS (Chronicles), his latest feature starring John Leguizamo, was showed at Cannes in the "Un certain regard" section with excellent reviews. Long live Ecuador! Viva el Ecuador!

I saw this movie twice at the movies in Ecuador, and it was a lot better than I expected. I mostly wanted to see it because I wanted to support the film industry of my country and see the landscapes, honestly, I didn't think it was going to be any good; but I was surprised to see how great this movie turned out.

It is about a young man, Salvador, who gets kicked out of the military academy, and consequently gets involved in the dirty business of his cousin Angel, and has to go through a lot of hard situations, including his relationship with his father.

This movie shows a lot of the many faces of Ecuador and of many countries of the third-world, shows the underworld; dirty business, murders, etc; also shows the "middle-high society" and most of all, the poverty of a lot of people.

The plot is very good, it has so many twists that keeps you entertained all the time and wondering what is going to happen next; also the performances are great, especially Carlos Valencia's, who plays Angel, he is totally believable in everything he says and does. All the supporting cast did a great job as well.

Bottom line: if you are into this kind of films, and you understand at least a little of spanish (I'm sure there are subtitles in english, but the jokes are way too good to miss them, and they are not well translated) this is definitely a must-see. ***** out of *****,