| Original Score: 3/5 | May 8, 2004

Often heavy-handed and obvious.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 15, 2004

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 2, 2004

Half Preston Sturges and half Sam Peckinpah...though it sometimes takes its swipes with a bludgeon rather than a scalpel, it hits more often than it misses.

| Original Score: B- | Oct 5, 2003

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 4, 2003

To connect with the story, you have to care about the victims or the character who falls from grace and unfortunately, you don't give a hot tamale about either.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 3, 2003

Herod's Law is beautifully photographed, its imagery glazed with a sepia patina that suggests dust and neglect.

| Original Score: B- | Oct 2, 2003

Yeah, OK, we know. Absolutely power corrupts absolutely. What else?

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 20, 2003

Alczar, who won the Mexican Oscar for his performance, brings a lot of energy to the role, but it's not enough to counterbalance the film's heavy-handed predictability.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 18, 2003

Juan arms himself with a rewritten town constitution and a pistol. Kinky sex and ill-gotten dinero shortly follow.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Sep 16, 2003

Alcazar makes a deft transition from idiot to maniac, serving as an anchor for the broad performances around him.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 12, 2003

Accomplished and delightfully subversive.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 12, 2003

Funny, evocatively photographed, and vibrantly acted salvo.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 12, 2003

A wonderfully cute and biting political satire.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 10, 2003

As the story unfolds, Alcazar's slow-burn performance pays off with a venomous brilliance, making the audience choke on the guffaws that came so easily earlier.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 25, 2003

Comes off as cartoonish drivel, broadly played and poorly written.

Full Review | Original Score: D+ | Jul 16, 2003

Luis Estrada, the co-writer and director, uses his characters so clearly as symbols that he neglects to give them the complexity of human beings.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 11, 2003

As [Estrada's] fast-moving scenes raced toward the big-bang finish, I never wanted the dust to settle.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 10, 2003

Oddly, but quite effectively, it's a comedy. A dark comedy, but funny nonetheless.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 20, 2003

At times it seems like the director became as self-indulgent as Vargas, repeatedly hitting the same notes of petty debauchery and cruelty well after the easy-to-see points have been made.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 13, 2003