Rodrigo D: No futuro

The music is the must important expression in the film, all in this sound Peste Mutantex a band of punk band from Medellin. They music say about serius problems and discontent becauase the politician situation in colombia is terrible. The music respresent shout by rodrigo (the principal actor).

"Rodrigo D no No Futuro" is a film direct by victor gaviria and the principal star is ramiro meneses a recognized actor in Colombia. The movie is set in medellin in 1988 was to much violence and drugs, Rodrigo is a teeneger who lost his mother and he find to replace the void left by his mother whit punk music but his family is very poor and he has a lot of problems after his mother died.

I thik is a diferent point of view than other films by victor gaviria, he show diferent parts of medellin, diferent drugs, diferent types of violence and overcoat how the situation in this country impact childrens, teenegers and adults. Most of people try to do something for the situation. This movie leave a ethical reflection and one problematic what has live now.

The movie is based on real facts.

This is a brilliant movie about Rodrigo and his friends, a group of punks who wander the streets of Medellin, getting high, stealing cars, listening to Punk and Heavy Metal music. They're stuck in lives of poverty, with no opportunities and no motivation to try to improve their lives. Their routine is interrupted only when the cops catch up with one of them (which is really an inevitability for all of them, sooner or later), or they get into a fight. Rodrigo dreams of starting a rock band, something that might give his life some meaning (he has no education beyond the 1st grade, has no job, and basically sits around the house all day listening to his family complain about how lazy he is). The movie depicts the world of Rodrigo and his friends with harsh realism, accompanied by striking cinematography, pulsing rock music, and a script with an ear for how these people communicate. While this movie is clearly influenced by "Los Olvidados," it also bears a resemblance to Alex Cox's great "Sid and Nancy" - we are invited to see the world in which these young rebels live, and to understand the ways in which it can destroy them.

Someone told me about this movie years ago and, for whatever reason, they thought it was a serious documentary. It isn't, but it sort of seems like one, though. Honestly, if you aren't a fan of 80's punk, I'd think this one would wear on your nerves pretty quick but, happily, I am so it was OK but not great. This subject matter of lower class youth with no future has been covered before in numerous other films and, having been heavily involved in the punk subculture for over 25 years, starting in the early 80's, you'd think I'd have more sympathy for the characters in this film but I really don't. It didn't end well for many of the people I knew back then and, apparently, it didn't end well for some of the guys in this flick, either. The shanty town portrayed in the movie is clearly a mess, but it's the bad attitude that dooms you. Period. The lack of character development doesn't help, either, and the film just kind of rambles on, but I found it enjoyable enough and it has a great soundtrack. If you feel you need to see every depressing punk rock or juvenile delinquent flick ever made, then you probably need to see it; if you are looking for fun, punk rock shlock south of the border, watch "Intrepidos Punks" because this thing is pretty much a non-stop downer and not fun at all.

Rodrigo and his friends are bored teenagers living in Medellin. Rodrigo wants to start a punk band. The youths mainly loaf around the hillside shanty towns and, for kicks, steal a bike or car, or shoot someone.

This film really grabbed me. Not necessarily for any specific reason, but more for the overall concept. One, you have the setting in Medellin. For me, that is synonymous with the drug cartel. And at the time this film was released (1990), I am sure that is exactly what it was going for.

Also, the punk rock scene. This is probably naive on my part, but I don't generally think of punk music as being so international. I know there are punk bands everywhere, but it seems odd to have one as the focus of a South American movie. Maybe that's normal. But this surprise is what really made this a great film for me.

After a long and, I have to admit, exhausting pursuit I finally laid my hands on a bad VHS copy of this old Colombian film about troubled teenage boys on the streets of Medellin slums. Highly recommended by quite a few people with similar taste in movies as mine, I was expecting a hidden gem, an accurate representation of everyday issues of youth life in a third world country's poor neighborhoods. Gee, what a shock it was to see this film has none of what I hoped to find in it. The title implies it should be about a certain Rodrigo, teenage school drop out growing up in a shanty town of Medellin with nothing but crime and aimlessness all around him, finding his only release in a dream of being a drummer in a punk rock band. If the director decided to follow Rodrigo's story, with an emphasis on his broken home and the reasons why he does ( or doesn't ) the things he does maybe the final result would've been at least an average motion picture. But instead of concentrating on Rodrigo's story and the gradual unfold toward his tragic ending, director Victor Gaviria goes with a stack of more or less uninteresting characters, grinding the storyline into incoherent pieces with no practical value for the viewer. I say uninteresting characters because we get to know absolutely nothing about them. Where do those kids come from? Where are their families? How in the world are they surviving? What is the reason for their apathy towards the world? The vague clues to those questions are placed here and there in course of the movie but they surely don't clarify the path those youths decided to take. Gaviria's piece has a lack of fundamental part in storytelling : humane characters. No matter of their nature, one as a viewer has to be able to understand their motivations, open the door into their lives to be able to comprehend it. You will get nothing of that in "Rodrigo D-No Futuro". The script is not in place either as I was struggling to keep my concentration until the very end. I have nothing against slow plots if they serve the purpose but this just drags on forever and one gets a feeling of pressing the eject button and throwing away this whole nonsense. From the 10th minute until approximately 85th you know nothing more than you did at the initial point. Just a perpetual motion on bunch of kids loafing around, wasting time, stealing vehicles, drinking, smoking pot..and listening to some really amateur, awful punk rock. What surprises me about "Rodrigo S" is a fact that supposedly it has a small, but devoted following among punk rockers and it doesn't even do the iconographic part of the job right. Since when do punk rockers wear t-shirts with swastikas?? I always thought punk rock movement is rigidly anti Nazism and I know for a fact that just a small outcast group of punk rockers( called skinheads ) embraced Hitler's ideology of hate. I don't know, maybe at the time when the film was made it was different in Colombia than here in the Western civilization. As I stated earlier, the characters are dispersed between limited screen time and therefore completely uninteresting since this should be a story about human lives, not a Steven Seagal flick where rationale does not matter. When the fateful events occur at the end of the movie you don't know what's going on nor why it happened. I've seen more than a few Latin American films that deal with the similar subject in a superior way ( Cidade de Deus, Pixote, 1st story of Amores Perros, Bus 174 ).... Gaviria's grave mistake with "Rodrigo" is not knowing what he wants the film to be : a pseudo-documentary with no content or a movie with documentary feel and no storyline??!! Whatever he had in mind did not work for me as I felt betrayed instead of touched as I should be. If you still want to see it go ahead but don't expect poignancy as you will not get it. "Rodrigo" could've been a much better movie if placed in the hands of a director with a vision, sensibility and dexterity of telling a story about unfortunate kids trying to swim in a hollow pool of nothingness...

Not recommended ( 4/10 )