

The action becomes more familiarly story-driven as the film progresses, especially as we watch Rio’s first encounters with an attractive new student (musician Kelli Wakili, credited here as Kelli Strader). (An abundance of facial tattoos makes the latter job easier.) The quasi-documentary approach suits Rechenberg’s no-frills, realistic dialogue, but doesn’t keep it from growing mundane over the course of the longish pic. He and DP Lyn Moncrief frame scenes tightly with a handheld camera that tags along restlessly for much of the film, we follow behind characters so much that we can identify the backs of their heads more readily than their faces. Instead, Rechenberg focuses on making us feel like we’re silent observers moving within their world.
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Rio, though seemingly smarter than his peers and gentle at heart, goes along too readily with bad-news acquaintances Flores, a new prison guard getting an education from coworkers in how to abuse his authority, puts up no fight that we see when they make him part of their no-snitching brotherhood. Though we see enough of each man’s private life to understand his motivations to some extent - even if we hardly sympathize when Miguel violently pushes for increased stature in his aunt’s crime organization - none offers the kind of viewer-surrogate moral framework most films of this sort provide.
