Heli, film review: Unremittingly grim chronicle

(18) Amat Escalante, 103 mins Starring: Armando Espitia, Linda González, Juan Eduardo Palacios, Andrea Vergara

Linda González and Armando Espitia in ‘Heli’

This is an utterly brutal but very stylised drama about a family caught up in the Mexican drug wars.

The director Amat Escalante shows plenty of visual flair but his detached, matter-of-fact approach to the suffering endured by his protagonists becomes alienating.

In the world he shows, everyone is so desensitised to violence and death that kids will play video games and their parents or grandparents will potter around preparing food even as someone is being tortured in the next room.

There is no Scarface-style glamour at all in Escalante's portrayal of "Narcoland," just an unremittingly grim chronicle of misery and degradation.