Cebalord
Very best movie i ever watch
Contentar
Best movie of this year hands down!
Invaderbank
The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.
Martin Bradley
Amat Escalante won the Best Director prize at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and it's easy to see why. "Heli" is an absolutely brilliant and utterly uncompromising study of crime and poverty filmed with a documentary-like precision that makes its scenes of violence virtually unwatchable, (including a scene where a boy's genitals are set on fire). At its core are several extraordinary performances by a young cast who inhabit their roles so completely it's impossible to tell where the actor ends and the character begins. Heli is an 'outlaw' not in any criminal sense, (he is totally innocent), but in the sense that he exists outside the fringes of society and is sucked into a criminal underworld by circumstances totally outside his control, (his young sister's boyfriend has hidden drugs stolen from a drugs cartel inside Heli's home). This is humanist cinema but set in a place almost devoid of humanity. It's frightening, bleak and deeply disturbing but also essential viewing. A masterpiece
Raven-1969
A newly married couple struggles to make a living in an arid landscape and cinder block home with barred windows. A violent culture of drugs and illicit sex simmers beneath the surface of their surroundings and lives. As do hidden psychological wounds, meddlesome bureaucrats and unfeeling, brutal thugs for cops. They are at pains to see it, yet the couple's meager existence is belied by other family members, chirping cactus wrens and Gambel's quail, friendly little dogs, and love. The forces of light and darkness lock in a vicious battle for supremacy in this family's life. Before the film began a woman from the area of Mexico where this story is set, testified that the film is true to the way things really are. Non-professional actors carry the weight of portraying the story and do so in a compelling way. Certainly this is one of the reasons why this film won the "best director" prize at Cannes. Other reasons include beautiful cinematography and an enthralling story. This is not a film for the squeamish. The story moves slowly yet, as with the setting sun, this does not detract from its beauty.
Michael Chase
Hard to know what to make of this film. It is very well acted and beautifully shot: every moment is completely believable. But it is also profoundly depressing. Heli, a young father and factory worker, and his 12-year-old sister are caught up in a ferocious explosion of violence when the sister's boyfriend, a young soldier, tries to steal some drugs. The theft is soon uncovered, and Heli and the boyfriend are subjected to some of the most brutal torture ever depicted on the screen. The plight of these young people is pretty well hopeless, since it's almost impossible to tell the difference between drug dealers, police and soldiers: even minding one's own business is not enough to protect ordinary people from being destroyed. The movie is, therefore, ultimately shocking and dispiriting, and one assumes this was Escalante's intention: to testify, unflinchingly, to the horrors of Mexico's drug war. But the brutality of the torture scenes comes close to being complacent: worst of all is that young children witness and participate in them as if such mutilation and killing was as normal as a game of sandlot baseball. One comes away with very little hope for Mexico's future, and with nagging questions about the relations between violence and art. Is the depiction of casual, merciless cruelty ever really justified?
R-P-McMurphy
A dark and twisted tale set in Mexico with beautiful cinematography. It might be very hard to watch for its long takes and some incredibly disturbing scenes."Heli" tells the tragic story of main character (Heli), a teenager, and his sister's boyfriend, a soldier, who gets Heli's family in trouble when he tries to steal some cocaine.The movie was pretty slow for the first two acts, its up until the third act that the action starts. I did admire the technical aspects of it (the cinematography), but it wasn't really anything special as the critics are saying. It felt like they were trying to emulate what Carlos Reygadas does in his films, but I did get what they meant when they called it unflinching.It was really heartbreaking to watch, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone for the brutal violence and animal cruelty it contains. I would've liked it a lot better if they would've hurried up with the story by editing a couple of scenes out, had the actors showed a little more emotion, or had the film made a more satiric approach like "El Infierno".As I said, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, at least not to watch it in a movie theater, but if you're looking for an artsy, realistic crime story you might like it if you enjoyed movies similar to "Irreversible", "Traffic", "Despues de Lucia", "The Hunt", or "Amour".
