Sunday, July 21, 2019

Neza: City of Culeros.

When a movie opens with a skinny drug-dealing pimp beating the shit out of people in the middle of the street while AK-Bron De Kike Giles' “Me Vale Madre” (I don't give a fuck) plays; then it means the movie is going to be a fun & sleazy ride that only the king of videohomes Christian Gonzalez could ever conceive. Welcome to Neza, folks. A city not far from CDMX and Christian portrays it as its known apparently. It is a city that is poor and nobody there is innocent & nobody leaves it alive. Or so they say.


While it’s official that blowhards with money & an education run the city of Neza, but who exactly is running the underbelly of Neza?  It’s a man named Lopaka (Roberto Sosa). Lopaka is a rather simple looking dude, but he controls all the drug pushing, gangs & whores. He’s got power and the balls to be the boss of it all. A couple of very dirty cops try to bring him down, so they “recruit” (drug up, beat her up & hold her against her will) a prostitute named Martina to infiltrate Lopaka & his crew so the cops can bring him down and even take money he has hidden away. Once Martina is “found” by Lopaka in the trunk of an abandoned car, she’s taken in and this is where we learn that Lopaka takes very good care of everyone that works for him, which consists of former street whores & table dancers. Remember those dirty cops that are trying to end Lopaka? They too work with him, but of course this is all gonna become a huge clusterfuck of betrayal & death.


After finishing Neza: Ciudad Del Vicio (aka "Neza: Vice City"), it can be said again that Christian Gonzalez is a Mexican filmmaking genius in smut & trash. Neza is one fucked/weird/wild hour & half of crazy characters who don’t give a shit about anything other than survival by pushing drugs & women. Lopaka’s crew of ladies are all fucked up, but feel salvaged by him since he saved them all of from the mean streets of Neza. They are loyal to this man and will do anything for him and also fuck him whenever he wants. They of course kill for him as well and it’s no easy death for these victims either. Lopaka has it made, doesn’t he? A real man’s dream come true..

I must admit, sometimes the movie is quite incoherent, but with that it makes up with some very memorable scenes such as the “Quieres Coca” scene which consists of women mixing up cocaine topless as Lopaka watches in enjoyment. A big fucking happy face & all. Then there’s of course the torture scene of the traitor in the crew. It’s cheap as shit with the typical sound effects of stabs & squirms, but it is funny to see nonetheless. However, the funniest scenes of the movie are when Lopaka is in his bedroom which tries to look “romantic” and it’s the room where he bangs all of his ladies. Or where the ladies bang him that is, since they get on him most of the time and if I recall, I only seen him force himself on one of them only once.

While I don’t wanna reveal how the movie ends exactly, the movie does end with AK-Bron performing “Cumbia Del Culero” (Cumbia of the Asshole) and the lyrics to this song really go with the movie's overall tone. The opening line of the song goes: “I’m an asshole because this is how the world made me” and basically this song symbolizes how everyone in this movie is. They’re assholes. All of them. Neza: Ciudad Del Vicio ends with assholism (is that even a real word?). Also, a drunk man is in front of The AK-Bron band performing in a sleazy nightclub. He too is an asshole perhaps.

The main culero of the movie is played by Roberto Sosa and it’s honestly a little unusual seeing him in this kind of a movie since he starred in indie pretentious shit before Neza. He did a few videohomes as well, but nothing like this one at all. It’s wild but so cool that Roberto had opened up to star in this particular movie. Roberto Sosa nailed it as Lopaka and made the character very memorable, despite how plain he looked. It’s all in the attitude and way with words. Next to Roberto Sosa, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez is the other big star in the movie and while his character is just there being an asshole of a cop; he plays it so well. A role he was born to play. A culero cop.

On the front cover of the Neza DVD, it says “From the New Mexican Cinema, comes the latest shocking movie!” It’s obvious the tagline is trying to sell Neza as a part of whole new wave/contemporary Mexican cinema, but it can also be interpreted as a big fuck you to it since this movie is far more better than anything that any of those pretentious new wave Mexican filmmakers have tried to shock their audiences with. Most of these pretentious filmmakers have used themes of crime, sex & poverty, and while to some it’s so graphic & tragic, some of them overall are still actual garbage (the worst kind of garbage). Not entertaining, not very memorable. Watch Neza and it’s a movie you’ll remember and for sure be entertained by its trashiness, rawness & craziness.


Christian González once again (always, but not with Clon De Hitler) brings me a movie that I loved & was glad to have seen. It is fucked & it is weird and so fucking ironically funny. Neza never looked so cool & more grimy until this movie came along.