A Major Disappointment

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

"Tropico" is a music video by American recording artist Lana Del Rey and she also wrote the script for this one. And it runs for only slightly under half an hour which is a runtime we basically only know from Michael Jackson or Kanye West as well. Very impressive. But only in terms of numbers as this is not a particularly great music video. It obviously tries to be very impressive and artistic from the visual side and also in terms of the story, but to me, it never felt even close to authentic. It all felt fake and just included for the sake of being as impressive as possible without achieving this goal. The music is sometimes fine, for example very catch at the beginning and the "Always on my Mind" ending is sweet too, but that obviously has not too much to do with Lana Del Rey. It simply is not enough quality for such a long video. Not recommended unless you really dig the artist. Thumbs down.

Tropico is very unusual film. I don't recall seeing other productions similar to it. Or you have standard short music videos, or full length music films like The Wall or Yellow Submarine. Tropico is something in between : 27 minutes long, featuring three songs, some dialogs and a lot of poetry (parts of poems : I Sing the Body Electric by Walt Whitman, Howl by Allen Ginsberg and America, why I love her by John Mitchum.) First part is a surrealistic grotesque - cowboy's parody of Garden of Eden with John Wayne as God, Lana as Eve, white Afro-American (albino) as Adam, and Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Jesus. Second part ultra realistic depiction of urban Hell on Earth created by men in "land of god and monsters" - Los Angeles: drugs, liquor, smokes, strippers, prostitutes, gangsters, firearms, mind killing jobs etc... Third part is dreamy, romantic redemption part in country side (Hills around LA ?)Tropico is definitely worth watching and listening, even if you are not Lana's fan. Who is not familiar with Walt Whitman, and Allen Ginsberg poetry, should first read mentioned poems, and maybe also some analysis of those poems to better understand the meaning of whole thing. For me Tropico is a philosophical short music movie which makes you think and to be a better person. SUBTITLES : If somebody looks for polish subtitles for Tropico, I just finished the translation. You can downland the file from mine website : www.graphique3d.republika.pl/Tropico.zip

Watching "Tropico" was very intense the first time. It's one of the greatest ideas ever. It's still intense. Lana Del Rey did her music justice by doing this. Del Rey's music demanded more than just sound. It's cinematic quality needed this video to communicate the fully. I feel extremely inspired by "Tropico". "Tropico" is going down in history and it's surely just the beginning of what's to come from Lana Del Rey.

FIRST...If you don't like or understand Lana Del Rey then you won't like this short film or any previous or upcoming Lana's work. So the first part of TROPICO did sound a little silly to me at first view but in a second view i started to understand what was this film all about and i say that because although I'm a big fan of her but i didn't want to judge tropico as wonderful and etc..etc before i even see it like many fans do so this is what i really liked and didn't like about it: I liked the story "which i see" it was about two lucky humans(Adam&Eve)in love who lives in paradise but in a weaken moment they sin and lost it all to find themselves on earth where they start their journey back to but necessary the same paradise they left and in order to achieve that they had to sin again for the last time by prostituting and steeling.I also like that my favorite song "Bel Air" got some recognition at last What really makes this project profound and deep is the mind behind it..Del Rey's mind that wrote all the three songs this movie based on "and surly wrote the whole film" in a very deep and delicate way and that is proving more and more she isn't manufactured or a superficial artist but an educated singer with a great love for poetry and visual arts and a huge gift in writing lyrics and not to mention a great amount of beauty that makes her close to the heart(I don't know her personally but i guess it's true from all her music and interviews that i listened to). The one thing that i didn't like was the extensive focus on the girls bodies because in general it's very rare to find nudity that serves the concept without being offensive but hey it's the legend Lana Del Rey so i will let it pass. So this is it.. the end of Born to die chapter and what a great closer to a unique different music project. At the end i couldn't find more truthful and Justice say than the this one phrase from Slant Magazine's review "Del Rey doesn't position herself among the film's icons of Americana the way, say, Kanye West or Lady Gaga might. Instead, her work continues to serve as both a tribute to an imagined past and a critique of contemporary pop culture."