User reviews

In Mexico City, a wealthy compound is surrounded by walls and surveillance system to protect the locals against the violence of the slums. During a stormy night, a billboard falls over the wall and three smalltime thieves cross the border through the breach to rob. They break into a house and kill an old lady; the residents organize militias to chase the delinquents. Two of them and one security guard are murdered by the vigilantes, but the sixteen year old Miguel (Alan Chávez) hides in the basement of the teenager Alejandro (Daniel Tovar). When Alejandro finds Miguel, he feeds and helps the boy, but it is impossible to escape from the Zone.

"La Zone" reflects the life in a Third World big city, where the afraid middle-class lives in houses, compounds and buildings surrounded and under siege of slums and protected by walls, fences and gates. Further, it shows the corruption in the police, where the work of an honest policeman is affected by the general corruption. This drama unravels how dangerous might be the principle of an eye for en eye and when common people becomes vigilantes. The performances are very realistic, giving a total credibility to the plot. The DVD released by the Brazilian distributor Dreamland Filmes has a problem and for accessing the last chapter, the viewer needs to go to "Scene Selection" in the Menu, otherwise the DVD stops. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Zona do Crime" ("Zone of the Crime")

OK. So I just saw La Zona @ SFIFF, and I must say... BRAVO!! Another big success for Mexican cinema, and well earned indeed. Rodrigo Pla's first feature delivers a harsh social and political critique about Mexican social classes and fundamental morality within a gripping and thrilling narrative.

As another Mexican film about social contrasts, I must say, it proves originality. La Zona (or The Zone) delves further into character development and the consequences of moral judgment. Pla's film remains interesting because it touches upon a broader universal theme: the human struggle to choose between right and wrong. With an engaging narrative, inventive setting and well developed character arcs, La Zona gets its point across, and makes us think…

This film delivers recurring themes in Mexican cinema but with a much fresher and more creative perspective, not to mention exciting…

Much 'props' to Villanueva's enthralling cinematography and to Zaragoza's performance as the chief of police…

8 out of 10. I really liked it.

The premise is very good, all the more so as it describes a situation becoming more and more explosive of our days. Certainly we'll see more movies of the kind in the years to come.

Personally I think that the POV of poor teens trapped into La Zona would have been more interesting, at least from a suspense and action point of view. Following a rich teen dislocates such suspense, plus it means you have to take an interest in a kid who's not the subject of the movie. On the other hand the focus on the private militia of citizens is interesting, yet I'm still a bit unsatisfied.

So, the movie is pretty good, it is a nicely rounded up excellent premise but it could have been much better. As such you don't get out of the theater moved. Emotion, as suspense, is too much diluted into a narration that changes angles too often instead of building up the tension with a limited number of protagonists tied together.

In any large city of Latin America or the rest of the third world, wealth and poverty coexist side by side, not uncommonly separated by just a thin high wall. In typical fashion the rich appropriate the bulk of the country's wealth, a few of the poor reclaim a tiny portion back through robbery and muggings, and the rich react in turn by protecting themselves and even striking back. It's low intensity class warfare.

La Zona is an enclave, a walled-city with massive iron gates, widely scattered security cameras and around-the-clock monitoring. It's the modern equivalent of the medieval castle. Laying siege is a slum, where live the nemeses of the inhabitants of La Zona. They have come to this enclave out of fear, for protection against further assaults, to enjoy the good life in a secure haven. Many are angry. Some have been victims. Some are vengeful.

The story begins when, during a storm, the wall is breached and electrical power is lost. A threesome from the slum takes advantage to penetrate the enclave and steal a few things. The temporary invasion does not go well. Shots are exchanged. People die. That event sets the wheels of the thriller in motion.

The typical characters are present. The honest police investigator whose work is subverted by a corrupt police department. The good bad-guy, the bad bad-guy, the good good-guy and the bad good-guy. They are all there, some in multiple copies. It's formulaic, but effective.

Thrilling and thoughtful film dealing with a rich compound besieged by walls and security electric system to guard the inhabitants agains the violent exterior characterized by poorness , chaos and misery . Set in Mexico D.F. , when a billboard falls on the wall it creates a breach in which three tiny delinquents enter into the enclosed neighborhood .But it results to be a location that is impossible to getaway and they find caught-up in the wrong place and the wrong time ; then things go awry for the three unfortunate crooks . The residents turned Vigilantes to be aware the enemy invasion and relentlessly pursue the small time thieves .

A stirring and violent film that delves the real confrontation between social classes shocked by crimes and misdemeanors: The upper class and the lower class , as well as the police corruption and many other things . It shows the dark atmosphere of paranoia , tyranny , and mass hysteria of the wealthy people surrounded by strict surveillance system to protect against the poor slums and even organizing militias , acting as judges , juries and executioners . There are good acting by a decent cast , such as Daniel Gimenez Cacho as a council member who takes law on his own hands , Maribel Verdu as a mother who attempts help and guard his son , Carlos Bardem as a violen neighbour , as well as the veteran Blanca Guerra . Special mention for the newcomer duo teen : Chavez as the escaped boy hiding within the neighborhood's borders , at a basement , and Daniel Tovar as Alejandro , the good teen who brings him food and a pair of trainers and he tapes his story on his videocamara .

It contains an atmospheric and adequate cinematography by Emilio Villanueva . And an evocative and intriguing musical score by Fernando Velazquez who has composed a lot of successful soundtracks with such international hits as The impossible, A monster calls , The orphanage, Crimson Peak , Gernika and The invisible guardian .Compellingly produced by Mexican/Spanish prducers as Alvaro Longoria , Pilar Benito , Rafel Cuervo , Ricardo Fernandez and Rodrigo Pla himself .The motion picture was well written, produced and directed by Rodrigo Pla. He is a fine craftsman who has directed nice shorts and full feature films as Desierto Adentro , A monster with a thousand heads and La demora .

This one started out with a lot happening with too many characters doing their thing and it took me a while to really get a grasp of what was actually going on. I was a bit fidgety for the first 30 minutes or so. However once I realised what was going on, I sat transfixed.

The movie is not so much about the story , which is fairly simple about a heist gone wrong, and to a certain extent predictable . It is more of a comment on Mexican society and the class struggle. And since I myself come from a society not too different from the one depicted, I could completely relate with the happenings. Other than that, the film also covers issues like families struggling to keep together, the lack of communication, xenophobia, self-righteousness and the basic human instinct of violence, rage and revenge.

The direction is simply brilliant and it is equally matched with the acting by every single character. The only other film I can compare this to is the great Italian film, L'Aria Salata. I am really glad that I had the opportunity to watch it and I highly recommend it for all people seriously interested in cinema. It will leave you thinking for a long time afterwards. I would definitely watch it a second time.

I really like. It's really one of the most ambitious films I've seen this year. The final scenes were so beautiful. The characters had clichés, but the others were more prominent. It was a very different thriller. It was one of those rare films that even a criminal could be innocent of and could be on his side. The insides exposed a painful world. It's an impressive and beautiful film. I definitely recommend it.

La Zona for me looks like a Hollywood film. That is not of course a bad thing, but after hearing about this film, I was expecting a more original look. Now it felt like any other drama coming from L.A. Even though this one was done in Mexico.

For me a lot of the acting was overdone and very theatrical. There were a lot of scenes that were touching and felt real, but there was a kind of unreal feeling through out the film.

It was however very well made. The cinematic style and compositions were well thought.

For me the film felt like a film, and I didn't believe in it. This caused me the lack of feeling and I didn't attach to the piece.

La Zona is one of those rare films which grips you from the start and doesn't let go till the end credits roll up. It is also a rare example of a thriller and social drama which delivers on both fronts.

La Zona are residential compounds in Mexico for the rich and the affluent. They have their own security system and guards and even law, thus separating them from the normal law of the land. These "zones" are real and do exist in Mexico city. The one depicted in the film is separated from the slum neighbourhood by large concrete walls and barbed wire. An accident causes one of the power pylons next to the Zone to collapse thus paving an entry for three young petty thieves from the slums to enter the Zone to make a quick burglary. Things go wrong, however, and two of the boys are shot dead while the third manages to escape from the burgled house but not from the zone.

We then follow the search for the boy, by the residents (who intend to kill him) and the cops, who are mostly corrupt ready to turn a blind eye for the right sum. The Zone is a superbly tense thriller and a damning indictment of the social system in Mexico. The residents in these zones appear to be totally cut off from the reality outside; a nice contrast is a golf course inside the Zone from which the players get a panoramic view of the slums.

It is hard to believe that this is the feature debut of its director Rodrigo Pla. It's one of the most accomplished feature debuts that I have ever seen and you can be certain that Rodrigo Pla's name is going to be much better known in the coming years.

This is about the Mexican big city, there rich people have created a zone behind walls. They keep the world out, but they are also kept out. Three young thieves enter and the hunt begins. The rich just don't want to defend their privileges. They want to kill for them.

But few of them are monsters. And what could have been an after all rather conventional social thriller, is more than that. The plot turns many times and everything isn't what it seems.

A strong movie about a class hatred which is becoming a dangerous threat to our kind of societies. It's a warning to us, not just to the rich.

At the risk of being wrong, I would say that production in the world film industry is mostly run by the high and medium social strata, with little creative input from the lower class. The middle and high class filmmakers may "starve" (for lack of material means to produce, not food) while they make their way, but once they enter the industry -as image makers for advertisement, television, film or new media- they frequently adopt a too comfortable vision of existence. This approach prevails when they deal with delicate social subjects, as the one Rodrigo Pla tackles in "La Zona", which has the certain value of being one of few films describing the potential violent relations between persons who live walled in exclusive and closed residential complexes, and people who live outside in marginal communities that surround the gated crowd, as in this case. Three poor guys cross the wall of La Zona to steal. Two die, one hides in a family house. Next a "Zonian" teenager finds the one hiding inside his house. For me, the merits of this film end here. Although Pla describes the fascistic tendencies of civil defense and police force, flirts with hyper-violence and adds a gram of science-fiction, this humorless film (and the situation was open to it and much more) opts for a melodrama formula, a tale of the "bad consciousness" type, and in the third act it never recovers. I do not know if the uncontrolled sappiness is a cultural trait of Mexicans, but as used by the filmmakers it has been the cause of much imbalance in many motion pictures, from the works of El Indio Fernández ("María Candelaria") to Iñárritu ("Amores perros"). From the moment the walled teenager's heart softens and he tries to become the savior of the young thief, "La Zona" follows the usual path of melodrama, with servile score that overemphasizes what is obvious. The cardboard characters grow stiffer, Daniel Giménez Cacho handles one of the most embarrassing scenes, in front of a TV set (Maribel Verdú is thankfully in the background and out of focus) and the ironic final shot of the ex-walled and temporarily liberated teenager eating tacos in the corner of a popular barrio, functions as a little scolding to the middle class adults who protect their small privileges to provide a gift (or borrowed) life to kids as the taco-eater, but above anything else as a wimpish validation of the kid's "courage" who, when the lights of the cine go up, will return in his comfortable 4X4 to pa's home in La Zona. And from there we go back to the first shots of a little (symbolic?) butterfly, flying beyond the wall... Watch it, but wear glasses.

Every year there's a summer movie festival in the open court of an old palace in my town. I like going there, with some friends of mine or alone, to see films carefully chosen every time from the recent months new releases. The logic is: no blockbusters, high quality. I knew nothing about "La Zona". From the first minute, i was given the possibility to see the future directly in the eyes of Aldous Huxley or George Orwell, if they were here now. The birth of a brave new world, full of violence, where law is a word without meaning. Or with a lot of different meanings, that's the same. The plot is very simple,but brilliant. A perfect mechanism, with classical roles and fantastic acting. Destiny is in the air, like in Greek tragedy, and the best of all is that you can't identify yourself with one or the other easily. If you do that, you'll be someway guilty. Not to miss.

La zona is a movie taking place in a gated community somewhere in Mexico. The story begins at night when a billboard crashes down at the wall of said community and three teenagers enter it in order to steal valuable things as the neighborhood is located right next to a very poor and desolated city.

The film shows how the population - who is not used to deal much with the world outside their walls - copes with the situation of three guys intruding their peaceful safe zone. The longer they are inside the more things get out of control. The story is both told from the view of the inhabitants and of the three burglars. It shows how a little disturbance of order and peace can bring out the worst in some people and lets them make unethical decisions. Another topic of this brilliant movie are police corruption (in Mexico), but I don't want to tell you too much.

What I personally want to stress is the great camera work which makes one feel very attached to the story and puts the viewer in the middle of the events taking place.

In conclusion it can be said that la zona is an outstanding piece of art and cinematography and it is a definite must-watch for anybody who is even remotely into movies.

There is nothing wrong with the synopsis, the "gated community" - dilemma could be delivered with a twist like this, no doubt. But the problem is how it is executed.There is not one character here with any kind of depth whatsoever. Its all one-dimensional cardboard-pieces responding to some really incoherent twists of the plot.

The dialogue is embarrassingly bad sometimes and the actors fight to get some kind of guidance in their performances. The story kind of wants to be both drama and suspense-thriller but fails on both parts.Not that a drama cant be in the vein of a thriller and vice versa. (Check out Buenos Aires 1977 for some chilling thrills and high drama.)

The stage is great though. The scenes of the clean cut streets clashing with the outside slums is alone thought-provoking. And the watchful eye of the surveillance-camera is perhaps tiresome by now but never the less effective here. But thats hardly a reason to spend time and money on this shoddy piece.

The first hour of the movie was adequate entertainment, but then the chain snapped somewhere and the movie just went astray, and I was finding my attention starting to slip away.

There were some interesting aspects to the story, for sure. The obvious one being a walled-in rich area in an otherwise rundown city, and the fact that there was a massive social difference between those within and outside the wall of La Zona (The Zone). And the aspect of difference between laws between the two was also interesting, as outside The Zone ordinary police were the law, and inside The Zone local guards were the law.

Storywise "La Zona" started out quite okay, but it never really took hold and never really turned into something overly impressive. And as mentioned above, then it totally lost its bearing after about an hour.

The acting was adequate, but nothing extraordinary though. At least I didn't take notice of anyone in particular.

"La Zona" is a mediocre entertaining movie. But not being overly familiar with Mexican cinema, I can't say whether or not this movie is an overall representation of mediocrity there.

Thise of us who favour the establishment of a more equal society argue that it would even benefit the rich themselves - what's the point of having money if you have to live in fear of someone taking it off you? And the idea of a film set in a secure community might seem to be a good way of exploring the corrosive effect on personal morality that comes from living on either side of a state of siege. In 'La Zona', we see residents of a posh enclave in Mexico, slum kids and a corrupt police force: at times, the movie seems to be suggesting they're all as bad as each other. After a botched robbery sees an intruder stuck in the zone, the residents resolve to track him down: unfortunately, the plot doesn't make perfect sense. In particular, the motivation of the residents, to risk their own lives for a notion of revenge, never seems wholly logical; it's hard to believe that such influential people would not have appropriate police protection, if they didn't antagonise the cops by insisting on doing it themselves. The ending is thus less powerful than it tries to be; what's really chilling is the way that legal systems often seem to care only about property rights. Some of the worst behaviour on this planet is carried out by those who never need to break a law.

a small community. its solutions for a profound problem. nothing original. but the old theme has an inspired manner to be presented. cold, direct,realistic, cruel. and that fact creates bridges between story, viewer and the ordinary reactions to confuse danger. because it is a film who presents the fear as sign for different situations. the house, the other, the family, the rage as justice, the paranoia slices, the corruption of system, the expectation of a woman and her daughter. a film about the others who becomes a movie about yourself. that could be all. in fact,because it represents little more than a good film, that detail represents just the beginning. because, in a deep sense, it becomes after its end.

Everyone knows that violence and lack of security is the most famous trademark of Mexico state. Because of poverty and drug traffic. Here, the story focuses on residential areas which are the target of thiefs from Poverty Row. It is question of self defense, of vigilante groups, a tremendous social analysis of the Mexican society thru the prism of a riveting thriller with many characters. This plot asks the question if yes or no those two - rich and poor - communities can live close on to the other. Latin countries film industries are specialized in such schemes, more than the Hollywood factory. Interesting movie.