CS Weekly Archive > Weekend Read > 7/08/05

Media Fillers and Serial Killers

By nick birren

A shocking, thought-provoking, but ultimately watered-down thriller that calls attention to the power and ethics of the media, Crónicas is everything people want and expect out of an independent film -- and several things they don't. While gritty nature is projected with frightening realism, this film goes against the basic structure of a story to deliver a message, telling its tale in such a meandering way that it undercuts and even dilutes the genre aspects that should have formed its framework.

Crónicas
(In Spanish with English subtitles)

Sebastián Cordero (also directed)

Children from the hot and impoverished village of Babahoyo, Ecuador are disappearing. One by one, the elusive serial killer known as the "Monster" is torturing and burying his young victims, leaving a trail of blood for the local police. Traveling from Miami, tabloid TV reporter Manolo Bonilla (John Leguizamo) is convinced covering this story will make him a network star and is willing to bend the veiled line of journalistic ethics in order to get his story, no matter what the cost. Meanwhile, tension in the town reaches a boiling point when a poor traveling salesman, Vinicio Cepeda (Damián Alcázar), is jailed for manslaughter -- but he's determined to get out and protect his family from the shadowy killer.

Sebastián Cordero (Ratas, Ratones, Rateros) proves that he understands how to tell a story by the way he plays with its structure. There is no arc for any of the characters, and the there doesn't need to be. The film gets away with not having any arc, because the characters are trying to achieve an external goal. They perfectly exemplify human characters because they are trying to accomplish a specific goal by taking the path of least resistance in an effort to selfishly further their own careers. They're sleazy because of the way they spin the truth to create higher ratings, but you still root for them because you want to find the truth just as much as they do. The characters may examine their own decisions and look at their own character, but ultimately at the end of the story they are essentially the same as they were at the beginning. This works because the story is about something much larger than the characters on the page: it's about the sensationalism of the news, and the sacrifices people make in order to further their own professional careers.

The arguably ambigous opening to the film follows Vinicio as he returns to Babahoyo after a recent sales trip. Cordero creates a soft sympathy for Vinicio in these scenes, while gently gaining the audience's trust. However, by the following scene, Cordero cashes in on this trust in order to ensure the audience watches with wide eyes the next few critical and traumatizing minutes as Vinicio is blamed by the town's people for accidentally killing a child. At the climax of the first act, a mob viciously erupts, focusing their violence on Vinicio, while Manolo Bonilla sits "ring-side" filming the lynching. It resonates as a grisly and unforgettable scene. But what's more disturbing about it is the way Manolo is exalted as a hero from the town's people for documenting such a hideous event for his Miami-based show, "An Hour with the Truth."

Unlike the film's inciting incident, the second act has no driving force. Exposition takes the place of tension as we follow Bonilla and his news crew (Leonor Watling, José Maria Yazpik) on their quest to uncover the identity of the Monster. Thematically Cordero may be exploring Crónicas' theme of how the truth is interpreted, and even skewed, by those in control of distributing the facts (namely the media, as embodied by Bonilla), but story-wise the second act has no real goal other than to put the pieces in place for the big finish. That five extra minutes at the beginning of the film puts the audience ahead of the reporters and ruins it. We know who the Monster is, and we aren't invested in Bonilla solving the mystery.

In this scene Cordero takes command of his audience by setting up a world that feels dangerous, uncivilized, and slightly out of control. Despite its effectivness, the mob scene also creates a problem for Cordero. For the rest of the film, Cordero takes a more character-driven route that's less engaging for the audience but more faithful to his message. As a result, the film is never able to out-do its first act climax, despite some perfect opportunities.

In the second act, exposition takes the place of tension as we follow Bonilla and his crew on their quest to uncover the identity of the Monster and make themselves into successful televion stars. A prison-set meeting between Vinicio and Manolo raises more questions than it answers, and it's here that the film misses its mark. These scenes should have echoed Hannibal Lector and Clarice Starling, focusing on the tension between someone who has information the other desperately wants. Instead, the scenes fall flat without giving the audience anything to really hold their attention. Even the subtitles pose a problem, sometimes rushing by so fast that non-Spanish-speaking audience members will have a hard time digesting everything Vinicio is saying.

While Crónicas never lives up to the power of its opening, it is an intriguing film with a powerful message about our media-saturated society. A few more rewrites might have created a story that sustained an audience all the way through. The good news is that this film, Cordero's second, shows promise. Remember his name, and let's see what he does for an encore.

Crónicas
Palm Pictures
Rated R; 108 min.

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Nick Birren is from Chicago and is a die-hard Cubs fan. If anyone else out there has this same disease, click on the byline for support.

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