Questions of humanity sit at the troubled heart of Los bastardos, which concerns (among other things) the shared curiosity of people who assume they have nothing else in common. Early in the film, a white construction foreman picks up some cheap labor in the form of six illegals; ferrying them to the work site, the gringo asks the men's presumed spokesman where in Mexico they are from and when he hears "Guanajuato" he asks "Is that near Acapulco?" Cultural ignorance breeds contempt on both sides of the border and the resultant disregard of humanity in all of its varieties triggers the tragedy that concludes Los bastardos. With its use of prolonged takes, banal backgrounds and nonprofessional actors who reveal themselves to be powerfully instinctual performers, the film shares a bloodline with Gregory Nava's El Norte (1983), Miguel Arteta's Star Maps (1997), Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland's Quinceañera (2006) and the border vignette of Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel (2006), all focused at least in part on the tribulations of Mexicans making a life for themselves north of the border. Yet the laconic neorealismo of Los bastardos shifts dramatically early on, as "wetbacks" Jesús (Jesus Moises Rodriguez) and Fausto (Rubén Sosa) use their downtime between $10 an hour jobs invading the home of a white single mother (Nina Zavarin), whose teenage son has ditched her for his friends and left her depressed and vulnerable.
"Why are you doing this?" asks the woman of Jesús after he has made her serve them an impromptu dinner of microwaveable Tex-Mex. When he answers "Por la dinero" ("For the money"), her reaction is a stony "Did John send you to do this?" By answering in the affirmative, Jesús might be answering honestly or perhaps just using the woman's paranoia about her ex to keep her off guard. Writer-director Amat Escalante (who scripted with his brother Martín) has built in sufficient ambiguity by this point to keep his audience off guard as well. Earlier, Jesús and Fausto have withheld the details of an early morning job from their countrymen and are shown secreting a sawed-off shotgun in a gym bag. Later, after being insulted by rednecks in a community park, the pair surprise one of that number as he dozes drunkenly on a picnic table. Escalante cuts away from this scene as the shotgun is raised and the engine roar of a passing jet drowns out all ambient sound. The question of whether or not Jesús and Fausto have already taken a life haunts their interactions with their hostage, who finds herself fearing for a life she had seemed done with. Escalante avoids turning Los bastardos into a tired riff on The Desperate Hours (1955) by having Jesús and Fausto etched as diffident intruders. (When Jesús makes a move on the woman, he smells her hair and offers cunnilingus rather than penetrate her against her will.) Yet the sting in this tale is the acknowledgement that intimidation of any stripe can lead only to tragedy.
The carnage that brings Los bastardos to a downbeat conclusion is likely to be its principal selling point through word of mouth in particular, one very nasty special effect but the film has more to offer than shock value. The non sequitur capper to its third act puts the film in the cinematic tradition of other low key dramas that reserve unexpected bursts of violence for their final frames think Claude Chabrol's Le bonnes femmes (1960), Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider (1969), Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Why Does Herr R Run Amok (Warum läuft Herr R. Amok? , 1970), Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl (À ma soeur!, 2001) and Gus van Sant's Elephant (2003). What these films have in common beyond the grim nature of their fadeouts is a shared understanding of the dead air that can accumulate between strangers and loved ones alike, and which becomes an incubator for resentment and hostility. Thwarted communication is a recurring leitmotif, even among those who speak the same language; while Jesús places a frustrating phone call back to Mexico (his first contact with his family in three months), the woman and her son are shown early on to snipe at one another from opposite ends of the house. In drawing this parallel, and by refusing to assign glib labels of good and evil, innocent and tainted, Amat and Martín Escalante keep Los bastardos from being a P.C. polemic.
Los bastardos (which scored hosannas galore at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival) comes to DVD under the aegis of the tony Kino International label with a refreshing lack of explanation or apology. There is no director's audio commentary, no electronic press kit of talking heads and mutual back-patting and a 28m making-of featurette is strictly behind-the-scenes footage and some remarks by the performers. (The last third of the supplement deals less with the film's reception in Cannes than an ugly incident in which costar Ruben Sosa was detained, strip searched and questioned by the local authorities who did not believe he was a guest of the festival.) Letterboxed at 2.35:1 (anamorphically enhanced), the feature looks excellent. The Dolby 2.0 mix is perfectly adequate for a mostly subdued soundtrack that is only occasionally punctuated by abrasive music. The remainder of the bonus features is limited to a 1m 24s theatrical trailer and a 17 image still gallery of production photos.
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by Richard Harland Smith
