Towards Darkness (2007)

This movie follows a kidnapping in Columbia.If you want a look at Cartagena Columbia this movie has some value but as entertainment the movie has so many problems.First the good which is related to the bad....there is lots of effort at creative and interesting camera work: angles surprises etc which is really fun and beautiful at times but things like the ratatatat sequences of images becomes rapidly irritating and are done too much. Also I found the symbolism heavy handed or actually funny as right before the cop and his car get demolished and you see buzzards circling. All the religious imagery is excessive and kind of a turn off it lowers the intellectual bar a lot.The acting is so so at best...lots of pretty men and an ugly lead woman.The flashbacks are irritating and excessive disrupting the story and any kind of rapport you might feel for the characters exactly the opposite of what it is supposed to do. I laughed at the reviewer who said he expected to see a flashback of the soccer ball being manufactured. This flash back technique made the story very hard to follow. I didn't even realize it was the girlfriend who shot him I was so confused by the end of the movie. And when you can't follow you get bored fast.This movie could have been saved by lots and lots of editing and cutting out the flashbacks as the way of telling the story.I love Columbian movies for the scenery and the handsome actors but this one is a trial to get through.Although insignificant compared to the above problems... the subtitles are translated with artistic license e.g. gente innocente (innocent people) becomes "people caught in the crossfire"...and every other explicative is maricon (fag) which is never translated as that but rather "stupid" "idiot" etc... Although this is an improvement.'El Infierno' a Mexican social commentary dry comedy on this very same nightmare situation of social anarchy and killing from drug money is a far better movie. Watch it instead.DO NOT RECOMMEND

Now I know why the Spanish speaking Cultures have not won a War since the time of the Musket ... if they have more than one bullet in the gun, they shoot themselves after shooting someone. I assume the time it took to reload the Musket, gave them time to reconsider suicide? ... LOLThis is the second Spanish Language movie I have watched this month (the other being, 'El menor de los males'), that a character deliberately, and as part of their job, shoots someone, and then immediately commits suicide?!?!Why does she kidnap her Lover/Best Friend since childhood (who she just had sex with, and brought to see her dying mother?) ... Why does she shoot him? ... Why does she torture him by taking off his blindfold, to give him hope, and then the ultimate betrayal?... Why does she shoot herself? When you kidnap someone, you either get the money or not. FARC would have a hard time getting members, if you have to kill yourself, and your entire team (family in this case) must die, when you do not get the money.A 'Gotcha' ending, that made no sense (She could have escaped? Gave him the gun? Shot him mercifully? Re-ransomed him?), was the icing on the cake, of a movie that made me feel ... I was stuck in traffic

Towards Darkness deals with the very serious subject of the kidnappings and violence in Colombia. This is certainly a topic worthy of a movie, but not this one. This has to be one of the worst movies I have seen recently. The director is OBSESSED with the idea of using flashbacks. In fact, several times there are flashbacks within flashbacks, and if the movie has a character, you're going to see them flashing back. In one scene where they are playing ball, I half expected to see the soccer ball flash back to when it was manufactured.One reviewer said this movie had a great car chase--I was so bored by the time the car chase occurred, that it made no impression on me. It seemed like half the movie involved the ex-FBI agent who was delivering the ransom money being shown stuck in traffic. Traffic jams are never a good subject for a movie. Skip this one.

I rented this movie thinking it would be an action film that came out of the dark. I realized during the first few minutes that this wasn't going to be short. The movie contains flashbacks of the kidnapped man's life with his friends and family. There are also flashbacks of other people as well. Mostly flashbacks of the people who are looking for the guy. I thought the ending was predictable if you listen close to the bad guys words when the scene of the kidnapping is giving. I didn't enjoy this movie because it was missing something. That something may be some details that are needed and some details that should have been kept in the dark! If u enjoy really boring movies that have the same ending that every other movie of the same category has now a days then rent this or buy this but in my opinion I would rather not see this again. It's not even a movie that I would see if I could go back through time.