Lima: Breaking the Silence

I began to see the movie thinking that I was going to enjoy it. And you know what?: I did. It is so bad that most of the time I couldn't help it but laugh. Who was the movie's historical advisor? A Mexican citizen? A Chicano? It is no wonder that Disney did "The Emperor's New Groove" and everybody loved it, having that Hollywood thinks of all Latin-Americans as Mexican-like clones. The music is so bad chosen that I almost forgot that I was seeing a movie about Peru and started looking for "Zorro" or Speedy Gonzales. For God's sake! Couldn't they put some real Peruvian music?

Moreover, the dialogues, situations and characters are so ridiculous that I am wondering how Christopher Atkins agreed to do this movie. Poor guy! And with him, all the other "A-Team" and "MacGyver" extras that acted here.

How could anybody possibly think of terrorists in Peru as romantic, heroic heroes, so charming and cult that a foreign ambassador held as hostage would fall in love with one of them after one night? And what about the American journalist that managed to hide himself for months among the crowd of hostages before being recognized? Give me a break!

The only positive thing I can say about this movie is that it makes other low production films look good. Truly appalling acting, woeful dialog, pissweak stunts, it made other "I can't believe they made that" films such as Frozen Impact and Octapus 2 look like Oscar material. This is a hostage film where you couldn't give a toss about what happens to the irritating captives, or the so-stupid-they-deserve-to-die terrorists. Out of all the dreadful things in this film (too many to count), the thing that really summed up this movie for me was a supposedly ritzy party scene where the waiters in the ballroom were carrying trays bearing wine? champagne? you might ask, no...two glasses of water each. Wow. Lame.

This "film" pretends to dramatize the ordeal of the people who were taken hostage by MRTA terrorists in Lima, Peru, in the Residence of the Ambassador of Japan. Instead, we get a story which has Japanese officials playing mariachi music, terrorists and hostages dancing the tango, and the terrorist leader going to bed with the Dutch Ambassador. As a person who lived not 10 blocks away from what really happened, this movie is simply an insult to all involved.

Ok, so it's more of a rhetorical question, but still, the mind boggles. Was there any kind of thought put behind this project other than "let's get a few quick bucks out of this controversial event in a third-world country"?

Forget about how insulting this thing is for Peruvians and everyone involved in the real Hostage Situation the movie's "based" on (well, everyone except the terrorists themselves... They come up rather triumphantly when all is said and done). Forget about how irresponsibly the facts and the story are treated (if you're going to be so careless about the facts, why not use an imaginary country and imaginary characters?). Let's forget about all those aspects. Let's pretend this is just an original story. A piece of fiction. You know what? It still blows! Big time.

And it's not only because of the terrible acting, or the poor dialogue. It's also because this movie doesn't just ask you to suspend your disbelief. It asks you to take you disbelief and flush it down the toilet. The plot points lack any kind of logic. And when you think things can't get more ridiculous, the film-makers prove you wrong: Here, between the President dressed up as a soldier and the gratuitous sex scene, let's place a dance number!

Now, I'm not saying it's not fun. It's hilarious, if you're Peruvian. And I guess it's kind of amusing if you're the type that likes to watch train-wrecks and such. It's the kind of film that is so bad, it's almost acceptable. But, on the other hand, it's perplexing. There were actual human beings who thought they were telling a good story here? And telling it effectively?

Man... It gets really scary after a while.

Okay, this movie is directed by Menaham Golan, produced by NuImage and shot in Sofia, Bulgaria and shares half the cast with the movie "Armstrong" and was made in the same year, so I'm guessing they may have been shot back to back.

There aren't really any heroes in this movie, Joe Lara is a rebel leader who takes the Japanese embassy hostage but as far as I could make out he's not really a bad guy. Billy Drago is CIA, but is more of a bad guy and doesn't fair well at the end of the movie.

It tries to make Bulgaria look like Peru unsuccessfully, as it's very obvious it's shot in a former Soviet country, and there are numerous bad fake Spanish accent and not a single ethnic Peruvian in it! But it's not as bad as the other reviews would suggest though. It's obviously factually very incorrect, but if it wasn't trying to be based on real events it's quite competent.

Richard Lynch, Charles Napier, Joe Lara were all in Armstrong. Napier had very little screen time in Armstrong, so they probably flew him over to do one movie and persuaded him to shoot a few scenes for the other in short notice! So overall, I'd recommend this to anyone who liked Armstrong, and of course to anybody else who likes a decent low-budget action-movie.