"Sin Nombre" a tragic and gripping tale of Mexican gang warfare

Tragic and gripping, Cary Fukunaga's "Sin Nombre" revitalizes a gang-warfare genre that had appeared to be played out lately.

The movie deservedly made a splash at this year's Sundance Film Festival, earning prizes for Adriano Goldman's fluid widescreen cinematography and Fukunaga's sharp direction. The co-producers include the young stars of "Y Tu Mamá También," Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal.

While the early scenes suggest a traditional tale of brutal one- upsmanship and revenge, Fukunaga's script takes several unexpected turns as it follows the border-crossing adventures of a Mexican teenage gang member nicknamed El Casper (Edgar M. Flores).

Dominated and humiliated by Lil' Mago (Tenoch Huerta Mejia), a sadistic rapist who tortures and kills for sport, El Casper is just beginning to sense that he may want to reach the North with someone less volatile.

Like a Mafia chieftain, this psychopath is at his most threatening when he tries to create a little family feeling with the "homies," cuddling with a baby or announcing "I love you, son" to the person who's most likely to be next on his hit list. To nervous immigrants, he's as scary as a sudden cry of "border patrol!"

When they head toward the United States on a freight train that's crowded with far too many hopefuls, El Casper makes a decisive break with this monster that earns him the admiration of a young Honduran woman, Sayra (Paulina Gaitan). He also says goodbye to a future with the gang, smashing his cellphone on the tracks as if that could erase what he's done.

At the same time he alienates his young pal, Smiley (Kristian Ferrer), who is in the process of becoming a child soldier. Methodically taught to be indifferent to suffering, Smiley turns out to be an alarmingly quick study. His initiation rites include waving a gun and using it.

Reminiscent of the child narrator's blithely amoral viewpoint in "Days of Heaven," Smiley embraces his darker nature in a way that suggests there's no turning back. "Sin Nombre" eventually turns into a grimly ironic account of survival of the luckiest. But at what cost?

Everything is tarnished by the carnage that begins and accompanies this desperate migration to an unwelcoming North, and that includes the relative righteousness of the hero. El Casper tries to behave decently but, as Flores so vividly plays him, he's trapped by the noirish circumstances that surround him.

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com