Director:
Hugo Rodríguez
Starring:
Diego Luna
Jesús Ochoa
Lucas Crespi
Norman Sotolongo
Marta Beláustegui
Rafael Inclán
Rosa Mariá Bianchi
Carmen Madrid
Daniel Giménez Cacho
Release: 20 Aug. 04
IMDb
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Nicotina
BY: DAVID PERRY
The ubiquitous Diego Luna (last seen in The Terminal, next in
Criminal) plays a Mexican hacker who spends more time peeping on his
next-door neighbor than doing his job. That’s likely the reason that the
dominos affect his cashing in on a deal with some Russians for diamonds, a
failed trade that involves countless innocent people to die. Here’s a movie
that asks the audience to have a good laugh when that nice people die
because they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. While pathos can come
from such situations (Mystic River, Moonlight Mile), the use of such
scenarios for humor comes as a wholly unpleasant experience while watching
Nicotina.
Most of the comedy seems like those bad years of Blake Edwards while the
style is directly inspired by Guy Ritchie. But even the amateurish fun of
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is unattainable for director Hugo
Rodriguez, as he tries to tie all his outlandish style into the connecting
tissue of people’s innate need for a nic-fix. Despite the occasional moments
when the story proper seems ready to unfurl in an interesting way, the film
runs off on a tangent with peripheral characters who are likely to either
die or kill someone by the conclusion of the film. Their stories could be
interesting -- how different would their lives be if these hoods hadn’t
momentarily entered their lives -- but what this film misses is that
watching them soullessly enact these trajectories isn’t particularly
commanding. That’s why Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run told what amounts to half
of Nicotina in barely a minute of Polaroids.
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