Birds of Passage

I enjoy Guerro's ability to put the viewer in a relatively primative world / culture that is being destroyed by greed. Here he mixes indigenous folk with Spanish speaking Colombians and greedy gringos. It features themes on drugs, gangs, guns and girls. It is part South American art-house and part Scorsese / de Palma / Coppola epic. It touches on matriarchy, family, and traditions vs modernity. As for the birds, what do they mean? Maybe they signal the beginning of a new chapter.

It's probably not as good as Embrace of the Serpent, but not many things are. It's a brilliant film in it's own right though.

A brilliantly made crime saga about the clash between old-world tradition and new-world corruption

Allowing genre to inform anthropology and anthropology to enrich genre, Pájaros de verano strikes a broadly successful balance throughout, resulting in a film that consistently depicts familiar genre tropes in a manner which audiences will find unique, especially those whose only familiarity with this milieu comes from shows like Drug Wars (1990-1992) and Narcos (2015-2017), and Americentrist films such as Blow (2001), The Infiltrator (2016), and American Made (2017). On paper, it could be dismissed as just another gangster film, and although adherence to the genre template does occasionally work against the story, this remains a beautifully nuanced, aesthetically exceptional, and deeply lamentative film.

For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/IwEx5

Good movie! Very powerful. I went into it knowing nothing except the RT score and it was well worth it.

When you write an epic poem on a postcard...

This based-on-a-true-story movie about the origin of the Columbian drug trade suffers from a lack of production. The amateur actors and the absence of a music track make what could've been a memorable film going experience feel more like an educational movie they show you in world history when your teacher has a hangover and doesn't feel like teaching.

More's the pity, as there was some striking imagery and a fascinating story. If you want to be educated, drink a lot of coffee and watch this, but if you want to be entertained, re-watch _Narcos_ instead.