I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The Worst Film Ever

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Initially wanting to give this a higher mark, I seem to have settled for seven stars. I could have been influenced by some of the other reviews, although a number of them are exceedingly obtuse. Dogs die, and any city can supply a few dead dogs over the weeks it takes to shoot a film. Objections to the language seem equally misguided. Stories by English writers are written in English for their audience, even when set in different countries and different times. Should Gladiator have been acted in Latin, or Troy in Ancient Greek, The Duellists in French, Dracula in Transylvanian ? The DU is well-acted, and interestingly written, although somewhat predictable. Nevertheless it seems to need tightening, and this may be because of the relative functional inexperience of both director and script-writer. It wavers between corrupt politics and doomed romance. In essence it appears to be presenting the dilemma of the decent man, played by Javier Bardem, torn between living a moral life, an unsatisfactory marriage, and the everyday necessity of having a career sufficient to support his child. The artificial deal in the final scene about relinquishing the prospect of becoming president seems exceedingly unrealistic, although it also seems a convenient way of resolving this policeman's character. Ballet and cosmetics, the occupations of the two women in Bardem's life, are minimally brain-demanding.

John Malkovich's directorial debut casts Javier Bardem as Agustin Rejas, a cop in an unidentified South American country trying to find members of a revolutionary movement (which seems to have been based on the Shining Path). More than simply a good-cop-versus-bad-guys story, "The Dancer Upstairs" shows how Rejas understands his job, but has to deal with corruption, intrigue, and other things. One might say that Rejas sort of becomes as revolutionary as the people whom he's seeking, given how he comes to question the legitimacy of everyone and everything around him. Or maybe I'm going too far in analyzing this movie. It's worth seeing, if only once. Also starring Juan Diego Botto and Laura Morante.

John Malkovich's directorial debut is this deeply lyrical character study of a morally upright cop (Javier Bardem) trying to make sense of an inexplicably violent world. As played by Bardem, Augustin's face registers a near-constant state of moral warfare—redolent of Benicio Del Toro's work in Traffic—even as wry grimaces betray the absurdity of his situation. In an unnamed Latin American capital, asphyxiated dogs hang from light poles, placards featuring baleful epigrams written in blood drooping from their necks. It is the calling card of mysterious revolutionary leader Ezequiel, whose seemingly limitless queue of self-effacing disciples—including suicide-bomber children and machine gun-wielding Catholic schoolgirls—uncomfortably echoes radical groups in the Middle East and many points between. But what raises this film above topical exploitation is the provocative decision by screenwriter Nicholas Shakespeare—who also wrote the novel—and John Malkovich to disregard American foreign policy completely (not even a mention of the UN) and to only address the story in localized terms. Perhaps it is specious of me to assume the U.S. would jump into such a hotbed environment of interior social discord, but judging from its parallels with Haiti, both the location here and the situation—revolutionaries rebel against an elected (an appointed?) president—seem eerily ripe for external overhaul.The film's perspective of self-reliance is illustrated in Augustin's decision to bring Ezequiel down without reporting to the president—a breach of etiquette that circumvents state-appointed justice and speaks to a desire for a unilateral democracy empowered by the people. This idea of unilateral democracy is fresh in its refusal to blame anyone—including the shadowy, nominally communist radicals who kill with startling stealth and brutality—for the problems of the world. Shakespeare and Malkovich's idealism in this regard is tremendously heartening: The assumption that countries not only take pride in resolving their own conflicts given the chance—and not without significant losses, as an early montage illustrates in gruesome detail—but desperately need to, lest they remain fledgling nonentities into the foreseeable future, strikes me as a very reasonable progressive idea. Anyway, breaking away from the soapbox, it is clear in those penultimate scenes that Bardem faces a unique existential crisis—what is the price of selling out? And the last shot, punctuated by the strains of a probing Nina Simone ballad, is the work of a seasoned humanist.

This film is entrancing and intriguing. Others here have described the pace as slow, but I prefer to think of it as well paced and well measured. The characters are real and unlike the acting that you would see in a Hollywood-style production, the characters exhibit emotions that are true. For instance, when Lt. Rejas enters into the shanty town with his drawn pistol, his hands are shaking and his actions are jerky, unlike the Rambo-esq confidence exhibited by the standard movie cop. Laura Morante as Yolanda is enchanting and hauntingly beautiful. The unstated attraction between the two lead characters is palpable in the film. All of this, though, merely enhances a wonderfully illustration of and commentary on the relationship between the rule of law and the rule of man (or the military in this case) in South America.