In the slums of Mexico five young children try to survive the horrors of cartels, drug trafficking and outright kidnappings. Their most recent member, young Estrella (Paola Lara), has managed to gain three wishes, but like in many fairy tales, especially the darker ones, you have to be careful what you wish for.
I saw Tigers Are Not Afraid on a film festival. It was marketed as "The best Guillermo del Toro film he never happened to direct", which has some truth to it. The film has a lot of similarities with Pan's Labyrinth. The realms of fantasy mixing with the horrors of the real world, a young girl trying to survive and even thrive in such an environment and the overall mood being quite not as depressing as one would assume, given the subject matter.
First of all, I have to praise the child actors. All of them are terrific and more than manage to sell the horror, desperation and determination needed of them. Paola Lara as Estrella is of course excellent, but the best performance was without a doubt given by Juan Ramón López as Shine, the leader of the children. Especially the way he managed to sell the combination of toughness and vulnerability he can only show to Estrella and even then only under duress.
Unfortunately I was not so impressed by the fantasy elements. They didn't seem to have any reason or rhythm to them. The actual three wishes were just about perfectly handled, but everything else fell flat. For example, the children have this phone with a dragon on it. At one point the dragon takes flight and flies out to explore. Then, a few scenes later it comes back. And it's not on the background, either. The camera follows the dragon and the story is briefly paused for it to do so. But for what? Nothing it gained, it doesn't connect to anything and even the children's reaction is pretty blase. The whole film is full of little moments like that. Those things that stay on the background or are just there to be window dressing are perfectly fine, just world building, but quite often the film focuses our attention on them. And usually for nothing.
Tigers Are Not Afraid needs a bit polish and thought given to its elements to be a truly great film. As it is, it's worth a watch if you're a diehard del Toro fan and want something in his particular style.
