Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

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 movie really just wants to entertain people.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

It's Latin America in the Recent Past. Agustín Rejas (Javier Bardem) is a Sergeant manning a road check. The country is corrupt with a militaristic Presidency. Rejas is a former lawyer ready for a promotion in the capital. A mysterious man with others and a dead dog in a truck escape the checkpoint. Then it's five years later. He's a police Lieutenant. With his young partner Sucre (Juan Diego Botto), he's investigating a mysterious revolutionary group led by Ezequiel. They hang dogs from the lamp posts. The violence escalates as leaders get assassinated. Yolanda (Laura Morante) is Rejas' daughter Laura's dance teacher. He begins an affair with her as he suspects her connection to Ezequiel.The non-specificity of the time and place could have been improved by weaving the real story into this movie. It doesn't have to be perfect and most movies aren't real biographies anyways. The great aspect of this is Bardem and the sense of Latin America that this projects. John Malkovich is directing for the first time and he shows some competency. It is well-made and most importantly, he focuses on Bardem. The story does leave some questions. The ballet teacher's connections to everyone is very convenient. The investigation is not that clear. I don't know how nebulous the book is but adapting may have left something out of the movie. It would help to have great clarity, and better intensity.

Easily a top 10 movie for any Javier Bardem fan, most incredible drama based on a true story. Incredibly well done movie on the part of John Makovich, should be a solid 8.5 rating. Suffers from 7.0 due to poor distribution network. Supporting roles are well cast, movie is well thought out and executed. Worthwhile addition to any Javier Bardem collection! I hope to get my copy autographed one day!While not really filmed on location in Peru due to security concerns, the producers and directors went thru great lengths to make the movie feel like it was shot on location in Peru. Choice of English for primary language and the native tongue Quecheun for key dialogues was GREAT!!!!

In 2002 we are at the turning point of out understanding of what violence used for political objectives is: not revolution at all of any type, just plainly terrorism. But in These years of the beginning twenty-first century we were inheriting a whole set of misconceptions and deeply rooted movements all over the world that had been inspired by various brands of Marxist revolutionary tactics and strategies from the past. If you add to this set of Marxist or Maoist revolutionary movements the newly constituted al-Qaeda movement on a completely different ideological line but borrowing the methods of the previous movements plus some more spectacular ones, you have the situation around 2000-2002. But it is a turning point in history that some will try to use to their political and electoral benefit if not profit, particularly in the USA. These radical theories and uses of violence to impose a change that is then, if not at once, hijacked by some power hungry people or movements are coming to an end. The world has changed and the technology of information and intelligence collecting and processing has changed so much that there is practically not one single spot in the world where anyone, not to mention a movement of any kind, can hide for long periods of time. If Bush had not tried to force history in Iraq after Afghanistan things would be a lot better today, but as I said before some could not resist playing politics with history. That will not change the outcome but that will slow down the process.This film is dealing with that anti-terrorist action that has to be managed case by case, one after the other. There is not one single method for all cases but there must be one specific method for each case. Here we are in the Andes, probably in Peru where the fight is against the Shining Path Rebellion that organized hundred of small terrorist actions with a limited underground apparatus and a very limited number of leaders totally isolated or rather insulated against any security intelligence, or at least, so they say or think. The method in this case is to track these leaders and little by little surround them and take them in one single operation; As soon as the movement is totally beheaded it peters out because there is no second line commanding unit that can take over. Totally different would Al-Qaeda be because the top leadership has several hierarchical layers and it has been decentralized in the world with several regional, at times even local leaderships. To behead the top movement does not stop it because a new well trained leader steps into the shoes of the lost leader. And in the world the various regional branches are autonomous. Then they have to be weaned and their weapon or ammunition supplying routes have to be dried out or destroyed. It takes more time. Gaddafi's regime was brought down and he was a main provider of weapons to a whole set of movements and countries around Libya, but the arsenal was not destroyed or captured and then it moved across the desert and reappeared in Algeria, in Mali, now in Chad and Central Africa, probably in Sudan too, though it does not seem to go further. This explains why destroying the arsenal, chemical weapons first, of Syria is important. If it fell in extremist hands it might be used in any reckless way.If you take the case of Sri Lanka, nothing was possible when the ceasefire was broken in 2006 if the sea was not under control. The USA provided the Sri Lankan government with the information that enabled the armed forces, navy and air force to sink all the ships that were supposed to supply the LTTE, an old Maoist-inspired movement. Then they had to control the sky and that was done by the destruction of the only important air strip the LTTE had. Planes and pilot training were provided by Ukraine and Russia. It was also necessary to have some satellite surveillance to track all movements and concentrations of vehicles and personnel on the ground, under the canopy of jungle vegetation. Though it has not been so far acknowledged, it is probably China who provided that support. And yet it took three years to defeat LTTE terrorism. In Nepal the Maoist movement re-entered the political arena with a compromise that eliminated the feudal monarchy. In Myanmar the military dictatorship had to be pushed aside and democracy reestablished. That was done in a couple of years this time with strong international support of not pressure. In these cases it is the economic incentive that was the motor of such changes. The Chinese need to close up the violent Maoist movements in the world that are incompatible with their policy, their public image and the main commercial routes they want to re-open: the one across Tibet needs peace in Nepal. The one through Myanmar needs democracy there. In the same way some entrenched communist, or ex-communist regimes have to open up to market economy to simply survive or remain independent. Laos is changing because of the enormous amount of electricity they now produce and mostly export, which gives them the money they need to develop the economy. Vietnam has to move fast along that line to follow the trend in Asia and to be at the spear head of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Even Thailand has been obliged to find a compromise to stabilize their politics. [...]That's what is behind this film, at least one case, and it is interesting to see it since the Shining Path Rebellion has been defeated in the meantime. So enjoy the film. The sound is not very good due to the cultivation, of some rather fake English accent to sound realistic in Latin America. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

'The Dancer Upstairs' marks John Malkovich's debut as a film director, but it's hardly his first time in the director's chair: Malkovich was a charter member of the now-prestigious Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago, where he split time between acting and directing, developing the versatility that has earned him regard as one of the best character actors in the business. He brings a stage director's consciousness to this fine, unexpectedly suspenseful and complex thriller, a fictionalized dramatization of events surrounding the rise and fall of the Shining Path revolutionary movement in Peru.In the lead role of Detective Augustin Rejas is Javier Bardem, already an established star in his native Spain who is gaining increasingly wide notice in the US for his award-winning turns in Julian Schnabel's 'Before Night Falls' (2002) and Alejandro Amenabar's 'The Sea Inside' (2004). Bardem, like Malkovich, is a wonderfully versatile actor, and this film offers him another fine opportunity to display his range as Rejas, an idealistic police detective who abandoned a promising career as a trial lawyer in the hope that he might be able to work within the system to heal the corruption of his native country (left unnamed, though the story clearly borrows from actual events in Peru).The film opens on the high plains at the foothills of the Andes, with Rejas working at a highway checkpoint station. He encounters a vehicle bearing a mysterious undocumented passenger. While Rejas follows procedure, his colleague accepts a bribe, and allows the vehicle to flee the scene.Years later, Rejas has advanced through the ranks and now works as a detective in the nation's coastal capital. He and his partner Sucre (Juan Diego Botto, making the most of a small role) gradually begin to discover evidence of a burgeoning revolutionary movement led by the enigmatic 'Presidente Ezequiel,' whom Rejas eventually realizes to be the same man he met briefly years earlier at the mountain checkpoint. The followers of Ezequiel--a former college professor and Marxist who went underground ten years earlier to foment a 'fourth wave' of communist revolution (the first three being the USSR, China, and Cuba)--begin to terrorize the capital and outlying regions with suicide bombings and brutal assassinations. Rejas must uncover the secret of Ezequiel before the President enacts martial law and turns the government into another version of the brutal dictatorships previously seen in Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina.As the Ezequiel mystery deepens, Rejas begins to develop an infatuation with his daughter's ballet instructor, Yolanda (Laura Morante), with who he shares an unspoken bond and who seems to be an attractive alternative to his own wife (Alexandre Lencastre), a sweet but superficial woman who obsesses over fashion magazines and makeup and begs her perpetually broke husband to let her get a nose job. Rejas begins to court Yolanda, and as he becomes more deeply involved with her, he begins to discover evidence that she may be knowingly or unknowingly connected in some way to Ezequiel.The political dimension of the story is fascinating, but the main source of conflict is the interior world of Rejas, a sensitive, morally decent man who is torn between his faith in the law and his sympathy for the people who suffer at the hands of corrupt government officials. Rejas is also torn between his sense of honor and decency and his profound emotional attraction to Yolanda. It's a tough role to pull off, and Malkovich gives Bardem the time and opportunity to draw the character's emotional complexity with subtle, patient, expressive moments and line deliveries. Bardem has the rare ability to convey distinct emotions or states of thought with subtle gestures and nuanced facial expressions, and Malkovich demonstrates an actor's trust in another gifted actor to accomplish the film's emotional subtext.There are a few problems here and there. Rejas' attraction to Yolanda is understandable, but their burgeoning relationship feels a bit forced and underdeveloped at times. A subplot involving the Chinese embassy is introduced but left more or less unresolved. The plot is vaguely predictable, though, in the film's defense, the suspense has more to do with how Rejas will deal with the revelations his investigation will uncover than with what will actually be revealed.Even with the flaws, 'The Dancer Upstairs' is a highly intelligent and entertaining film, and offers yet another opportunity for American audiences to become acquainted with the fabulously talented Javier Bardem, who is my pick to be the next Marlon Brando.