Familiar Sin Nombre a Tragic Statement
After reuniting with her father for the first time in years, Honduran teenager Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) joins him in the long trek to try and cross into the United States illegally. When they get to Mexico, they find themselves amidst the crazy and chaotic hustle and bustle of the Tapachula Train Yard. Realizing there is safety in numbers, they join the massive throng climbing atop a locomotive to hopefully clandestinely make their way into Mexico.
Paulina Gaitan and Edgar Flores in Focus Features' Sin Nombre
During a torrential rainstorm they come into contact with brutal gang lord Lil’ Mago (Tenoch Huerta Mejia). After robbing many of the potential immigrants of their valuables, he is drawn to Sayra, but before he can rape the young woman he is stopped by disgruntled foot soldier and lieutenant Casper, a.k.a. Willy (Edgar Flores). Now marked for death by the gang he once considered family, Sayra and Willy find themselves on the run desperate to make it to the United States and hopefully start a new life devoid of bloodshed or tragedy.
Executive produced by Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal (who starred in Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También), the new import Sin Nombre doesn’t offer anything we haven’t seen before. Much of it feels like City of God redux, the look at the slums, gangs, guns and clandestine relationships enough to give a person a slight case of a déjà vu.
Yet once the action leaves Tapachula and moves onto the train the film gains a tragic elegance and majesty that’s rather affecting. As Sayra and Willy’s relationship builds the emotional poignancy begins to magnify, and while the outcome is never in doubt the fact the one-time gang member’s face-off with his former 12-year-old protégé Smiley (Kristyan Ferrer) is still so devastating isn’t a thing to scoff at.
Credit must be given to writer-director Cary Fukunaga for being able to handle the more cliché and maudlin elements of his script with balance and restraint. He stages scenes of startling power, a couple of shocks in particular catching me so off-guard I think I might have audibly shrieked out loud during the press screening. Additionally, he doesn’t shy away from the nastier and more difficult moments, allowing the constantly shifting duality of many of the characters to speak for themselves without any unnecessary visual shenanigans.
It helps that both of his young actors give bare, almost naked performances keeping things grounded in reality. Their rapport never felt false to me, didn’t come across like a convenient plot device allowing the director to take things from A to B, both Gaitan and Flores digging into their character’s very souls. By the time they entered the home stretch I wanted them to succeed, imagining a world without the two of them in it and together one I was starting not to want to see.
I wish so much of the early parts didn’t feel so routine and perfunctory, and I also wish a second act shootout wouldn’t have existed at all. I also think that, when he’s focusing on the machinations of the gangs, Fukunaga lets the material get the better of him, dialing up a slew of tired editing and camera tricks the rest of the picture thankfully eschews.
In the end I’m good with Sin Nombre, the powerful performances by the two leads and the building poignancy of the central thread enough to put it over the top. It isn’t a great movie by any stretch of the imagination but it does get the job done, the melancholic strum and drag of it all another reminder that the world isn’t all wine and roses, and that sometimes laying it on the line for your dreams is a job covered in the blood of tragic misery.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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