|
 In B- and bargain bin movies, some enjoy the dodgy, makeshift set pieces, some enjoy the genuine drive of directors and teams that have an idea and a shoestring budget, and some are in it for the cheap action or the occasional boobs. Vatos, a 2002 masterpiece cranked out by Paul Wynne, scores on all three levels. It is almost awesome in its badness – if you wanted to direct a bad movie on purpose, you’d be hard pressed to defeat this movie.  Paul Wynne got into film after failing an audition for Linkin Park The DVD cover promises us “scorching Latino action”, and the back informs us that the genre of the movie is “Latino”, to hammer home the point that we’re going to have some Mexploitation on our hands. Vatos is set in an anonymous city that could be anywhere reasonably close to the Mexican border. Despite the absence of Spanish, we know it’s a Latino movie because the movie persistently overlays everything with a yellow colour filter and most characters have a vague accent that ranges anywhere between weird and semi-passable. We start out with Gerardo, who is just free from prison. You can tell he’s up to no good by his dirty porn moustache and shaven head. The actor who portrays him can count playing ‘homie’ in Aphex Twin’s Windowlicker video clip and playing a ‘dancing Cholo (uncredited)’ in the tv series Titus as the highlights of his career. Gerardo tries hard to be bad-rear end and starts berating his brother for using his levitating car to come and pick him up. He is immediately established as a giant douche and consistently plays the part of a total dumbass, delivering not a minute of scorching action but rather a scorching critique of America’s failed education and integration policies. If exploitation movies sleazily appeal to the lowest common denominator, Gerardo is so ludicrously low-brow and fiercely anti-intellectual that you can’t help if the lowest denominator he’s appealing to can even read or figure out how to use a toilet. Sad times. Anyway, Gerardo and his brother Jose drive home and get casual death threats from another gangster named Spider, who is so brazenly homo-erotic that I thought his stream of abuse was going to end with him jacking off in his car. He is also the worst actor in the entire movie, and seems so angry because he has a hard time remembering his lines. Once home, Jose – the handsome, well-to-do brother who wants to be a lawyer – mediates between a sullen, douchey Gerardo and their father. Their dad is played by Joe Estevez, who spends the entire movie in the front garden looking vaguely Republican. and like he’s really thinking whether he took his anti-hemorrhoid medication or not. Jose succeeds in getting Gerardo a job at the law firm he works at. Only three people seem to work there, in cramped ‘80s rooms without computers, that look like the abandoned set of a latter-day porn movie shot by an industry upstart. The boss of the firm is a sleazelord named Miguel. You can tell he’s sleazy because he’s constantly almost-sweating and the camera makes us watch uncomfortable close-ups of his eager face. There is also a woman named Angela, whose sole purpose is trotting around in short secretary fetish skirts. Gerardo immediately starts putting his “smoothest” moves on her without a hint of irony and gets into trouble because of it. Angela purrs seductively at Jose, however, who inexplicably works in the same cramped office with empty shelves, but Jose ignores her siren call because he’s thinking of his career. Gerardo and his awkward moustache then step right through some plotholes and get a job from Miguel in a toilet scene that has sound quality so awful that it feels like we’re in a submarine. Miguel, for his part, based his performance on seeing a dubbed VHS of Michael Douglas in ‘Wall Street’, to get coke to some Latino hot shot played by Chino XL. So, it turns out Miguel is not just the boss of a law firm, but secretly runs a coke operation. He revels in the power he wields over his tiny ‘80s office Before making his coke delivery, Gerardo drops by to see his ex-girlfriend, Luchana. He’s greeted with two improbably bimboish looking ladies of generic non-white origin. When Luchana enters, she first does some perfunctory screaming at him, but soon they’re engaging in an incredibly awkward sex scene. It is the best acting Gary Cruz performs in the entire movie, what with his genuinely confused facial expressions and that mouth twitch that only accomplished porn actors can usually perform. Did I mention the copious amounts of sweat involved?  Wouldn't you make sweet love to this man? Gerardo comes back and sees the two other ladies literally rolling in the coke, in what must be the most unrealistic coke scene in movie history. After displaying some more of his casual misogyny, he replaces the lost coke with flour and heads out to Chino XL.  Coke is always better when you smear it all over yourself Chino XL notices it’s not coke and gets shot. Gerardo is then chased down the streets by Chino’s buddies, while it’s turned from night to day inexplicably, but then again, who are we to doubt the time-altering powers of a hip hop superstar like Chino XL. Terrible fight scenes ensue, and Gerardo spares a gangster’s life. It’s clear that Paul Wynne tries to play off Gerardo’s hidden good side here, but all we see is Cruz squinting while trying to memorise his lines. In the mean time, everyone starts getting down on everyone’s rear end. The gangster called Spider makes a few more appearances, clearly believing himself to be Vatos’ Joe Pesci. He literally spits every other line and is so ludicrously over the top in calling everyone his bitch that you can tell we’re looking at a man who is deeply conflicted about his sexual orientation and secretly wears a buttplug. Miguel, sweating more profusively than ever, knows that Gerardo hosed up the – relatively easy – coke job, and it’s a bad sign that we start feeling sympathy for him instead of Gerardo. To celebrate that both his sons have steady employment, Republican dad throws a garden barbecue. The scene is completely immemorable apart from Luchana’s eye-poppingly short skirt, which wisely gets more screen time than Estevez’s unenthusiastic dialogue or Gerardo stomping around like an angry toddler, and Jose moping on a garden chair. Scorching Latino party it sure isn’t. The scene ends in a drive by shooting, with Spider gunning down Gerardo and Jose’s dad. gently caress you, got my bullet wounds. Estevez dies.  He wears this expression the entire movie In response, Jose wants to become a gangster as well and take revenge. He is initiated in Gerardo’s gang of guys who never made it past grade school by getting beaten up in another very tame action scene. After getting kicked around by Gerardo and his gangster buddies, Jose stumbles into Luchana’s house. Predictably, they have sex. That’s all very classy, but we can’t feel pity for Jose screwing his brother’s girlfriend, because by this time everything that went wrong is Gerardo’s fault and the one guy he actually should have killed is still free. In a protracted showdown at the ‘80s porn office, Miguel, jacked up on coke, shoots Angela and then shoots Gerardo (finally!). Spider also gets his come-uppance, and so does his slithery second in command, who was allowed to briefly smell freedom away from Spider’s cock-fisted grip. Eventually it is Luchana who guns down a heavily wounded, dazed Miguel. In the last scene, Jose has taken over Miguel’s place as CEO of Sleazy Lawyers Inc. and is presumably continuing the drug trafficking too, bringing this racist narrative of how Latinos never move from poverty and crime because they don’t feel like it, full circle. He literally repeats an earlier line from Miguel about power, and you can see the sweat starting to set in. You can check out the movie's first five minutes here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loq6xRf43js Rating: 0/5, this movie is loving terrible
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2011 23:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 13:22 |
|