Dance with the Devil (1997)

Finally picked DANCE WITH THE DEVIL up after having seen it once or twice on Skinemax a few years back. I remembered it to be a pretty "odd" and violent film, and I was right. There are some problems with the pacing and storyline - but overall, fans of Tarantino-esquire material will probably dig this one.Rosie Perez plays Perdita Durango, a vicious fire-cracker of a woman who seemingly gets by from one con to the next. After she meets up with an equally (if not moreso...) deranged Santeria priest named Romeo - things really go to hell. Romeo is recruited to drive a truckload of frozen fetuses from Mexico to Vegas, and Perdita is along for the ride. Before the trip, the two decide to kidnap a couple of white-bread college students to sacrifice for good-luck. The rest of the film is a cluster-f!ck of Perdita, Romeo, and the two captives - and their "adventures" on the road - all the while being tailed by the Feds...DANCE WITH THE DEVIL is not a "perfect" film - as the plot seems to get lost in itself from time to time, and some scenarios and situations seem to be shown for no apparent reason - when the film could have been focusing more on the "action". There's a good bit of violence - and for the most part the film moves pretty quickly. It's hard to put my finger on it - it just feels disjointed at times and loses some of it's momentum towards the middle. Regardless - it's a pretty decent film with good performances and a pretty "out-there" storyline. James Gandolfini as the main Fed tailing them is a pleasure as always...7.5/10

Well done technically, well made, well acted, but an awful, awful, awful story. The scummiest, skankiest, nastiest, cruelest, vilest characters with not a sliver of redeeming likable quality are the heroes of this film. The violence and rape is graphic and I got the impression was being rubbed in the audience's face. These are people you wait for someone like Clint Eastwood, or El Mariachi to come and blow up, but no such person appears here, because these people are supposed to be the heroes - the ones we are supposed to cheer on. I felt more compassion for Hitler than these people. I liked Dr. Hannibal more than these people. Someone must have sat down and tried to think of all the worst characteristics you could create in human beings, with the worst possible circumstances in which they could be expressed. Ewwww.

Following the success of El Dia De Bestia and Accion mutante, once again the director pursues the nature of dark obsession. The two main leads are dysfunctional amoral sadists who re in some ways rediscovering a part of them that they miss - love. It's a story of trying to move on but the main characters are very amoral however there's darker circles than them, which pulls them further down the spiral. In essence this movie is an antithesis of a glamour Mafia movie and I believe represents Mafia dealings in a very dark fashion. In some ways I believe there's a nod to David Lynch with the actor playing the Mafia boss.The film is not a sick puppy nor is it banal. For those that have followed this director they will read between the lines to discover some salient points of US government intervention out of the states and human traffic - in this case embryos used for beauty products. Like 'clean Madrid' in El Dia de Bestia there were fascist movements in the capital at the time. Iglaisia puts this on the screen as a cultural reminder.Watching this movie at face value will seem very ultra violent and in some places extremely disturbing. Unlike other cult producers like Tarintino Iglasia uses a loot of cult cultural references to make his films extremely dark and funny (like La Communidad). If you're Latin or Spanish I feel there would be a lot more in this movie for you. Recommended viewing - but not for the faint hearted.

I saw six movies in three days at my first Toronto Film Festival -- this one last, after a slow-moving Japanese film, "Afterlife" (which I also enjoyed, and the pace of which set up this film wonderfully). I saw this uncut and on the big screen, and it shot right through my veins like an amphetamine from a slingshot. Javier Bardem is one of those rare actors who is so good, who disappears so far into his roles, that a lot of people still don't know him. Pity -- he's the pivot of this film, the steady-burning sun around which equally dazzling Rosie Perez throbs in her mad ecliptic orbit. The acting is, in fact -- in spite of what you're reading elsewhere here -- perfectly pitched in all quarters. I managed to get an uncut video copy online a few years back from ebay, and it IS true, the movie loses a bit in the translation from big-screen to small, but trust me, it's still a wild ride. I left the theater feeling like I'd been set on fire with gasoline and Vaseline.