Sin Nombre

Directed by the young talent Cary Fukunaga, a winner of the Sundance Film Festival Directing award, the film focuses on a combination of issues in South America, from involvement of kids and teenagers in Mexican gangs to what it takes for those who decide to leave South and Central America and seek greener pastures in the U.S.

The story follows two main characters, Casper and Sayra, played by lesser-known actors Edgar Flores and Paulina Gaitan. While Casper is the member of the feared gang Mara Salvatrucha, his faith connects him with Sayra, a Honduran emigrant that travels with her father and uncle together with the other emigrants on a freight train to the U.S.

On this journey together, as Casper tries to escape his faith and Sayra to meet hers, the main characters are slowly blending together, complete each other through their diversity, while they have to face the rough side of life in today's Mexico.

As a result, the film has a gripping, disturbing, moving sour-sweet blend to it, and is exactly the type of the film where it's unpredictability, natural change of pace, and lots of eye candy in the scenery, makes you part of the story until the credits role, making you beg for more inside.

Fukunaga's film feels so real not only thanks to his time spent in Mexico and his first hand experience with both, emigrants and immigrants he met before and while shooting the film, his cast of actual members of the Mara gang, perfect editing and combination of locations and the effort he took while filming to get the best out of his actors ("apart from beating them", he joked at Vary), makes the film one of the best feature debuts I've ever seen.

Instead of sensationalism for its own sake, director Fukunaga relates a gripping story straight, a clear narrative outlining the mental and physical journey taken by a young man recruited into a violent Latino gang and used by them to gather protection money to beef up the gang coffers; the young man makes choices that create difficulties his path one of both fear and self-awakening, and a parallel story of immigrants attempting to crash the U.S. border lines him up with a young woman of integrity. As noted by so many critics and reviewers, this is an often violent film, but how else to picture what we know has often made many border towns between the United States and Mexico unlivable? This is an important picture, a sincere and moving effort which captures a world most of us only read about

In Sin Nombre, first-time writer-director 31-year-old Cary Joji Fukanaga has crafted a uniquely moving film experience that dramatizes with authenticity the drive among the poor in Latin America to pull up roots and seek a better life in the U.S. Transcending genres and styles, Sin Nombre, translated "without a name", is performed by mostly non-professional local actors whose weathered faces mirror the harsh realities of their life. The film is shot by cinematographer Adriano Goldman with 35mm film rather than digital-video which is today's norm and avoids stylistic clichés such as hand-held cameras and dizzier-than-thou fast cutting.

Opening in Tapachula in the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico with a saturated color palette of deep red and orange, the trajectory of this low-budget, but beautifully shot thriller follows two parallel threads that meet in the middle. It begins with the initiation of a new member into the Mara Salvatrucha gang, in this case, a twelve year old boy called Smiley (Kristyan Ferrer) who has been recruited into the gang by young Willy aka Casper (Edgar Flores). Smiley must endure a gang ritual where he is thrown to the ground and kicked and beaten thirteen times to prove his toughness. As if that is not enough, the pre-teen is then forced to shoot a prisoner from the Chavalas, a rival gang.

Breaking the rules, Willy takes Smiley with him to meet his secret girlfriend Martha Marlene (Diana Garcia) but the clandestine meeting ends when sadistic gang leader, Lil' Mago (Tenoch Huerta Mejia) finds out about it and tries to rape her with tragic consequences. In the second thread, Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), a Honduran teenager is reunited with her father and decides to join him and her uncle on a perilous journey to New Jersey to meet other family members. In a powerful scene, they join other immigrants at a train crossing and then climb to the top of the railroad car of a passing train to begin the journey. One of the many dangers they face is that of being robbed by gangs or other poor Latinos who think they must have huge sums of money.

In this case, the robbers are Casper and Smiley who have been ordered to join Lil' Mago. When the leader tries to rape Sayra, however, Casper takes action which ensures that his future and that of Sayra will be inextricably linked. To reach the U.S., Sayra and Willy, now drawn together out of mutual need and attraction, have to overcome the network of covert operatives employed by the Mara gang, the danger of the border patrols, and the ordinary Mexicans who throw rocks at them and put their journey in peril. Powerful performances by Gaitan and Flores create an electric chemistry that wraps our hearts around their struggle to find release from their troubled past.

Winner of awards for directing and cinematography at Sundance, Sin Nombre has been attacked by some critics because it is a story about the truth of poor people's lives wrapped in a conventional framework. In my view, that is precisely what gives the film its strength. It is not an easy task for any immigrant who wants to make it to America, and Sin Nombre alerts us to the dangers as well as the opportunities. It succeeds not only as education but as theater, allowing the viewer not only to understand the perils illegal immigrants face but to relate emotionally to them as human beings.

Fukanaga was not a criminal or an immigrant but knows full well that the common thread existing among all people is that of being able to dream of a new day for themselves and the people they love. He spent two years doing research among the Mara Salvatrucha gang based in Mexico and Los Angeles, and in riding on the top of freight cars with Honduran and Salvadorean immigrants headed towards the U.S. border. The result is both deeply moving in its poetry and off-putting in its violence, a film of heartbreaking sadness but also one of joy and redemption, one of the best so far of 2009.

Greetings again from the darkness. Nice to see the initial low rating has climbed after more people have discovered it. It is a riveting film that weaves together two heart-wrenching, gritty stories that would otherwise seem unrelated. It is beautifully and realistically photographed and provides no-frills story telling.

Director Cary Fukonaga throws the viewer into the middle of the brutally violent gang world at the same time he depicts the frightening desperation of Hondurans making their way through an unforgiving Mexico towards an unwelcoming United States. Trust me ... you don't wish to be part of either of these worlds.

The film is at its best when these two worlds collide and Willy/Casper makes a life-changing decision to help a would-be victim. Edgar Flores plays Willy/Casper as the reluctant gang member with a conscience who is just trying to have a life outside the gang. He plays hero to Paulina Gaitan's Sayra, who is on her way to see relatives in New Jersey. Ms. Gaitan reminds of the talented Catalina Sandino Moreno from the excellent "Maria Full of Grace". Willy and Sayra are an odd couple, but seem good for each other, though their destiny seems obvious from the first moment.

Some great footage of the inner workings of an ultra violent, macho world of gangs left me wondering how anyone could escape alive. These are very scary people. I can understand some finding this difficult to watch, but I can't understand how it can be mistaken for anything other than fine film-making.

A truly excellent film, and an important one for our time. It has a brutal, awakening reality to it, but only to show the innocence and courage the characters portray. It is a very pure, and new story of survival. Brilliantly shot, with a ver rich, and warm feel, at the same time is brings you to the frightening underworld of the vicious gang organizations in Central America. Academy Award nominated film producers Diego Luna and Gael Bernal obviously saw a diamond with this film and out came a modern day masterpiece. Cant believe i missed it in theaters. For a first film by Cary Fukunaga, it looks as if it's his 10th, showing no flaws, and with a cast of actors that do their characters amazing justice, Sin Nombre is a MUST SEE!