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Heli

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Mexico, Netherlands, Germany · 2013
1h 45m
Director Amat Escalante
Starring Armando Espitia, Andrea Vergara, Linda Gonzalez, Juan Eduardo Palacios
Genre Crime, Drama, Romance

Heli must do everything it takes to protect his young family when his 12-year-old sister inadvertently involves them in the brutal drug world, battling against both the drug cartel that they have angered, as well as the corrupt police force. As he slips deeper into a nightmare of violence and corruption, it threatens to tear his life apart.

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What are critics saying?

40

Empire by

Grim and gritty. Warning: contains punishing scenes of testicle burning.

60

CineVue by Ben Nicholson

Shock and awe are both present - as is Escalante's intense style - but Heli lacks the ideas or formal dexterity to constitute a state of the nation address in any but the most cursory of ways.

80

Time Out London by Dave Calhoun

If Heli lacks enough focus and thematic clarity to make it properly special, it's still winningly provocative and always compelling.

67

The Playlist by Kevin Jagernauth

Heli is a despairing, bleak watch. It's a slow, but unrelenting look at one young man's punishing loss of innocence amongst a society that has already decayed beyond understanding.

75

Miami Herald by Rene Rodriguez

By film’s end, everyone has been transformed for the worst. Heli is a troubling and upsetting picture, a portrait of a broken country that seems to be beyond repair and a depiction of how violence and corruption, when left unchecked, taints saints and sinners alike, sparing no one.

60

The Telegraph by Robbie Collin

Throughout the film [Escalante's] camera tends to be lurking in the middle distance; coolly observing everything that passes through its inquisitive frame, leaving the messy business of reaction to us.

50

Variety by Scott Foundas

An accomplished but singularly unpleasant immersion in Mexico's vicious cycle of drug-fueled violence.

63

Slant Magazine by Tomas Hachard

The emotional and political point through all this isn't to be taken lightly, but because the entirety of the film has such a nihilistic temperament, its effect is muted.

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