Escobar :Paradise Lost

Nick loves surfing and so he and his brother travel to the Columbian coast in order to start a surf school. Where they settle on, is a beautiful town and as Nick explores he finds a beautiful girl Maria living there. She is Pablo Escobar's niece and as Nick and Maria grow closer and marry, Uncle Pablo wants to make everything perfect. He brings them to live in his hillside mansion. He gives them free run of the house and expects little favour in return. As he looks after them and protects them from difficulties in life, things begin to look strange. People turn up dead, problems get violently solved and good times turn very bad....

I loved this film. It is no masterpiece of the film form or language but it is a very well produced and directed piece that should be seen as a duel male character study. The key point here is the relationship between Nick, played with a naive fear by Josh and Pablo, Played with sublime venom and subtle horror by Del Toro. Very much like the Godfather part 2 was a look at the way father and son live in exactly the same way. They both have stumbled into these acts. Started as noble ambitions but end up with reality and spiritual decay shattering those and replacing them with cold hard facts. Here Pablo wants a confident, a counterpoint to his others. He does not find it in Nick but finds instead a rabbit, trapped in the headlights of a steam train. The two actors are well cast as these couter acting parts. One is big in presence and personality, the other a young star but with that youthful lightweight zeal. They are helped along by a director that has used a swift hand and a great gauge to understand these two and their duel.

A director can slip occasionally and with this being the first outing, it is expected but Andrea keeps her step well. Visually framed with a slight hand and a real power to pull on the nerves and build on the tense situations. Clever choice of bit players, many of whom are unpleasent in performance and heighten the feel of the discomfort. I was bound at the end by its gut driving fear and its claustrophobic twang. You know where it is going but it still works well at the nerves. It suffers only from the tacked on Love story that sees a stunning woman and man, who seem very much in love but become a little over kill at the end.My only other sadness is not that the Blu ray does not look good, it really does. Thanks to a simple transfer and a great print quality. The flaw is with its very steep lack of extras. Why oh why do they not treat a film like this to a few additional pieces.