On DVD: Pistoleros

Directed & Written By: Shaky Gonzalez

Starring: Erik Holmey, Daniell Edwards, Hector Vega Mauricio, Dennis Riedel

What can you say about a movie who’s most touching scene is a dad chastising his sons for taking to long to steal a car. Then “for the last time” shows them how to do it properly. I loved it but then I was always a little weird.

The Movie

Pistoleros starts off not with gangsters and a shoot out but with a film student sleeping on a couch. The phone rings. It’s the producer of a film he is developing. She has found someone they need to interview for the film. So the director and the producer head out to a shady bar to interview a very shady character called Crazy Uffe who, you guessed it, your not supposed to call Crazy Uffe. Uffe starts to tell them a story about Frank, the toughest guy in Copenhagen, and his five million dollars.

It seems that years ago Frank and his gang robbed a train of twenty million dollars. They all got busted but only fifteen million was recovered. Once everyone was out of prison the hunt was on for the missing five million. Halfway through the story, Krelle, another shady character introduces himself to our filmmakers. He informs the filmmakers that Uffe is full of it and the story they really want to hear is the story of Frank’s heist. I really don’t want to go into the plot anymore than that because there are some fun twists and turns. I will suggest you watch the credits, you don’t have to go all the way to the end, but watch the credits.

The copy on the cover makes a big deal about this being a western set in Copenhagen. There are some definite western elements but it’s more precisely a homage to Sergio Leone, even down to the Morricone inspired score. Half the fun of the movie spotting the references. Some are pretty obvious, some are more subtle. I kept trying to figure out who was Blondie, Angel Eyes and Tuco.  At least once I knew more than the characters because I had seen The Good, The Bad And The Ugly.

I would bet that Shaky Gonzalez is a fan of Robert Rodriguez. I found myself reminded of the Mariachi movies quite a bit. Even the way the story is presented as a story within a story. The action scenes were over the top, paying no attention to realism, but they were so cool they worked anyway. One scene involving way too much dynamite was frankly cartoonish, but somehow Gonzalez made it work.

The movie is full of thugs and lowlifes. With few exceptions they are dirty, stringy, fleshy and foul, thank god no one’s invented smell-o-vision, but it all looked great on the screen. Most of the characters weren’t any deeper than their name and appearance but what an appearance. I can’t decide whether casting this movie would have been a hoot or just a horror. While the characterization may have been a bit thin the acting was pretty good. Not being up on Danish film I don’t know if the cast are huge stars or people no one had ever heard of before. None of them seemed familiar to me.

I was enjoying myself but the movie did seem a bit long. I was surprised when I looked at the box and saw it was just 92 minutes long. Felt like a good two hours.

8/10

The Video

The widescreen video looks great. A lot of the scenes were heavily stylized with the color pumped up or drained out with extreme lighting but through all of that I never noticed any kind of artifacts or defects.

8/10

The Audio

The sound is in Dolby Digital 5.1. I never really noticed any surround sound elements though. The score was great and it was mixed well with the dialog. Actually I just realized that I can’t really say that because the dialog was all in Danish so I wouldn’t have noticed if something was unintelligible or not. So I will just say it sounded good to me. Yes the movie is in Danish but there are English subtitles. As much as I liked it I don’t think I could have set through it without subtitles. Not the first time at least.

8/10

The Packaging and Bonus Features

The DVD comes in the standard DVD case. The cover art is great. Whoever did it understood the fact that if your going to hold two handguns, they have to be identical. It does a good job of selling the movie. There were not any real bonus features just some stills and some trailers.

3/10

This movie is a hell of a lot of fun. Just on its own it’s a decent flick but if you’re a fan of Robert Rodriguez and Sergio Leone it’s even more fun. I will be keeping my eyes peeled for anything by Shaky Gonzalez from now on.

Overall (Not an Average) 5/10

The Review

The Movie 8/10

The Video 8/10

The Audio 7/10

The Packaging and Bonus Features 3/10

Overall (Not an Average) 8/10

-Mike Young