...this film was the main inspiration behind “City of God”, and I can see how. It is just as brutal, if not more so.

| Jun 20, 2023

[Luis Buñuel] meant to produce a savagely realistic film-document about juvenile delinquency in Mexico, and in that he certainly succeeded.

| Sep 19, 2022

This story of juvenile delinquency in Mexico City strikes me as being in a class by itself, unparalleled as a depressant and a sickener of the soul. The effect is all the more pronounced because Los Olvidados is quite brilliantly made.

| Sep 19, 2022

The direction by Luis Buñuel is remarkable for directness and economy.

| Sep 19, 2022

This is a cold and ruthless film as impersonal as a surgeon's knife... The direction of Luis Buñuel leaves you almost numb with its chilly message of harsh futility.

| Sep 19, 2022

You won't find any pity in "Los Olvidados," but you will experience the full effect of Buñuel's unvarnished filmic system of delivering onion layers of social realism. Think for yourself.

| Original Score: A+ | Jan 11, 2021

Bunuel knew that poverty can't be prettied up, that it needs to be shown as a dehumanizing cycle.

| Jul 18, 2020

A savage, beautifully wrought portrayal of Mexican juvenile delinquency and a harsh indictment of the society that fosters it.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 18, 2020

Olvidados, a turgidly heavy tract on hideous childhood, hasn't enough Daliism...

| Jun 19, 2019

...a far-from-classic drama that's lost whatever cache it may have once possessed...

| Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 2, 2019

It put the realism back in surrealism, mixing poverty and nightmares.

| Nov 29, 2018

The most horrifying of all films about juvenile crime.

| Jun 1, 2015

Bowery Boys and Pinturas Negras, Luis Buuel's lower depths

| Mar 25, 2013

Bunuel's chronicle of juvenile delinquents in Mexico is one of the first and best features about this issue.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 11, 2011

The mean older sibling of every hell-is-for-children shocker from Pixote to Kids and Ratcatcher.

| Aug 21, 2009

An objective, unrelenting closeup of life among some delinquents in a Mexican slum.

| Mar 26, 2009

In [Bunuel's] vigorous storytelling, he not only finds forceful images in the drama's reality, but adds a dream sequence - a miniature masterpiece that, by itself, is reason enough to see the film.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 19, 2007

Casts an unblinking gaze on the wretched lives of amoral Mexico City slum kids without sentiment or preaching.

| Feb 16, 2007

Buuel was, among other things, the great dirty surrealist of cinema.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 16, 2007

This is grim reality, and social realism is not precisely Buuel's forte; it is the poetic departure from this reality that makes Los Olvidados so riveting.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 16, 2007