Rosario Tijeras (2005)

This movie has an interesting, albeit somewhat formulaic, film-noir story as its foundation.However, the movie ended up being too tedious to watch because of the excessively long segments devoted to hammering the same message time and again.For instance, the wake and burial of one of the characters includes some creative twists---but ends up taking ~40 minutes of the film, so long before it moves on people in the audience start checking their watches.This could have been of "City of god" caliber, but will never be. I'm not sure why it reached such a cult status in Colombia.

I knew close to nothing about the movie, when I decided to see it, so I didn't have any particular expectations. Thank God, because the disappointment was easier to bear.Let's start with the most important aspect: the story. It's a drama. A true drama that anyone can create something so dull and uninspiring. What we get is a beautiful girl from a rough neighborhood, who earns her living as a prostitute and a killer. Wow! What a mix! I believe that was supposed to make the protagonist more ambiguous. The only person that cares about Rosario (and Rosario cares about) is her brother. They share an apartment, and he occasionally acts as her pimp. Cute. This unconventional young woman attracts the attention of two upper-class boys. Will their friendship survive this test? Will Rosario find happiness with either of them? You get the idea, right? Basically, Marcelo Figueras feeds us with an indigestible soap opera, spiced up with some coke, booze, nudity, and a few more or less random killings. The biggest problem is that it's a love story, and it's hard to find a love story interesting, when you totally don't care about the characters.With such a pathetic material, the rest of the crew couldn't do much to turn the flick into something watchable. So they didn't try. The directing is very uneven, with some pretty good scenes, as well as the whole funeral sequence, which unintentionally turned out quite funny, and the dinner at Emilio's house, which was just unbearably bad.The editing comes on par with the screenplay. The transition between the sequences is so smooth as a sand paper. Maybe that was supposed to give the movie a more documentary feeling, but it just made it still harder to watch.Now, the acting. The miserably boring story was a challenge that no actor could have come up to. No-one could have played those characters in a way that would appeal to the audience. Even the greatest artist had to fail in this particular case.To sum up, the main reason for the review is to help me release the unendurable frustration caused by watching "Rosario Tijeras". I was very angry with myself for spending time and money on the flick and I really had to do something about it. Unless you're a hard core fan of the book (maybe it's good, I don't know, I didn't read it) or an upper-class young man with a crush on a murderous prostitute, stay away from the movie!

I was watching this movie the other day... A friend of mine gave it to me from a screening of this movie that took place in Colombia... and I gotta say.. its quite a packer!!!! It tells the story of a woman who kills for hire.... Rosario Tijeras. Rosario Tijeras is a story of the world of assassins, life in Colombia, love and lust. Rosario is an assassin... she is surrounded by lust, and when she meets a guy thats different from all that have been in her life, she falls in love with him... but she is too deep into the dirty underworld and it might just be too late for her... What I like about this movie its that sometimes its funny in anoverdramatized funny macabre kind of way. For example when Rosario's brother gets killed, they throw a party for/with him.... his corpse anyway...... go rolling with him, even take him to have a lap dance..... but thats the life he lead and so thats his friends way to pay respect to their fallen friend. Overall this is a good movie to watch if you like action/drama movies...... kinda reminds me of City of God... the way the story was told thru flashbacks... although in City of God the flashbacks were over many years and in Rosatio Tijeras, its meer months in between...... and also City Of God is way better than this one. Take nothing away from this one... the director did a good job in this movie, although it sometimes can be a little confusing, its one of the better Spanish movies that have come out in some time... a good Latin movie to indulge in!!! I give it an 8 out of 10

Just saw this movie in Buga, Colombia. Not being a native speaker it was a bit hard for me to understand all the dialogues - especially the street slang of the hired killers. In my opinion Unax Ugalde did a very good acting job, but then again I didn't notice his poor paisa accent. The first part really was excellent. I loved the way the movie jumped back and forward in time, which added greatly to the suspension. It's a pity that the movie seemed to loose some of its direction in the second half. Still a memorable picture, and hopefully it'll get the international distribution it deserves. Does anybody know if there's a release planned in Europe or elsewhere?