“Heli” has a few things in common
with another entry in this
year's film festival, “The Missing Picture.” In the latter, we
are shown a horrific portrait of how things were during the Pol Pot
dictatorship. “In the former, we are shown a horrific portrait of
how things ARE, now in Mexico during the woefully ineffective War On
Drugs. As such, the filmmakers do not tell their story through
animation, dioramas, or any other medium that serves to bring any
comfort or mercy to our viewing experience.
The title refers to an ordinary young
man (Armando Espitia) trying to eke out a living for himself and his
family that includes his father, his wife and their infant son, and
his twelve-year-old sister Estela (Andrea Vergara). He and his
father are both factory workers, and are depicted as a somewhat
naïve, working-class family struggling to stay afloat and build a
better life for themselves.
However, everything changes when Estela
allows her seventeen-year-old police cadet boyfriend (that she is
actually planning to run away with and marry) to stash stolen drugs
at her home, unbeknownst to the rest of her family. Soon, Heli and
those around him are pulled into the brutal world of illegal drug
trafficking. It is a world that is all the more horrifying for being
depicted in such a realistic and natural way.
Teenage boys sit and watch (and eagerly
anticipate putting on YouTube) men being beaten, their genitals
burned, while a woman calmly works in the kitchen in the next room.
Corrupt soldiers break into a home and snap a puppy's neck. A young
man is hung from a bridge.
Such are the horrifying realities
onscreen here, which taints and twists those it does not kill. Its
refusal to pull punches resembles “The Counselor,” but while that
movie focused on the top, this is the view from the bottom, in the
very trenches where the war is being fought. It may be difficult to
witness, particularly when we see the gentle young Heli's loss of
innocence as he learns just how helpless he and his loved ones (as
well as the police) are in such a maelstrom of events greater than
perpetrators and victims alike. Such events could easily become
exploitative, but the acting is top-notch, the cinematography is
fantastic, and circumstances build and unfold in an unsentimental way
that refuses to yield to melodrama.
And yet, “Heli” isn't a completely
depressing ride, with an ending that seems to signal a new generation
that could yet emerge, one untouched and untainted, that could yield
a better future. Of course, that all depends on if its audience can
stand to watch.
Grade: A-
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