In this harrowing film from Colombia, eight teenage soldiers for a revolutionary terrorist group watch over an American woman, a doctor being held hostage for murky political reasons, high in the mountains of Colombia. Their only contact with the group they’re nominally a part of is by an intimidating, but diminutive, drill sergeant of a kind who drops by their camp to perform routine inspections from time to time. This isn’t a spoiler since it happens early on and I won’t even tell you which of the characters it is, but when one of the characters dies suddenly, the group is thrown into chaos. And even as they begin to drift, as a group, away from the larger political ideology of their “cause,” they begin to splinter within, as group members form uneasy alliances against others.
This is a really, really gripping and wonderful movie. The performances are all really top-drawer. Moises Arias is brilliant as the erratic, increasingly frightening Bigfoot, the group’s most unbalanced member. Sofia Buenaventura finds a frightened vulnerability in the group’s youngest member, Rambo, a child only just turned fifteen when the movie begins. Julianne Nicholson is incredible as the American hostage; it’s an intense and incredibly raw performance that’s often hard to watch. And a word for Wilson Salazar who didn’t show up half as often as I wished he had as the Messenger, the “drill sergeant” that’s shorter than all of the other soldiers, but terrifying and dangerous even when someone like Bigfoot is towering over him. The film is visually stunning; it’s too bad this movie didn’t get much of a theatrical release because it’s made to be seen on the big screen. Director Landes took his cameras to places in Colombia that have never been captured on film before, so nearly impossible are they to reach in the first place, much less with a camera crew, and the film is filled with stunning vistas of mountains above the clouds, roaring white-water rapids, vertiginous cliffs and claustrophobic jungles. I’d definitely watch a movie about the making of this movie; it requires a cast that is game for anything and it puts them through the paces in a really brutal way. Add in an abrasive, horror-influenced score by Mica Levi, always a compelling composer, and you have a rough, harrowing film that makes you really feel the characters’ exhaustion and mental imbalance.
Landes is really getting at something about human nature here, I suppose, and there’s a rather huge homage to Lord of the Flies at one point, but there’s also, in one of the most surprising moments of the movie year, a reference to I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, so Landes is getting at something about social corruption too. There’s a moment near the end of the film where one villainous character is pursuing another, somewhat less villainous character and the two tumble into a raging white-water river. And soon enough, the predator-prey relationship has ceased to exist; they’re just both being borne down the river, trying to survive. The point is clear. For Landes, both the victims and the perpetrators of cruelty and violence are both swept up in the same unstoppable social forces; we learn little about these kids and their lives before the movie started, but no one becomes a child soldier if society is looking out for you. These kids, who do some very, very bad things, are victims too. And Landes ends the movie with one of the best final shots of the year. It isn’t exactly visually stunning in the way a lot of the movie is, but it does something that I haven’t seen a movie do in ages and it’s absolutely bravura filmmaking, right out there on the edge, and I have to give Landes a lot of credit for having the nerve to end the film as he does. It’s a great movie, really, start to finish and I can’t recommend it highly enough. 4 stars.
tl;dr – Colombian film about child soldiers is gripping, harrowing, masterfully acted, visually stunning and, ultimately, deeply moving; an absolute must-see. 4 stars.