Mi America (2015)

Mi America review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

The rise in hate crimes across America is enough to make one lose their mind at what do about such chaos. But Mi America is unfortunately more of waxing on the despair than ever saying anything more than that. Perhaps I shouldn’t expect so much from such a low-rent thriller but there’s something about using these ingredients of America’s faults for little more than crime dramatics that gives the film a bitter aftertaste.

The central case concerns five migrants. They are the victims of brutal violence when they are tortured, shot up, and are dumped by an industrial complex. Why this happened is what the investigator Rolando Ramirez is determined to get to the bottom of, being more of a personal matter as a Mexican-American. Rolando has a force within his own community and that such a vile act would stain his neighborhood has pushed him to pursue this case. It gets way more personal when Rolando believes that someone within his own community may be part of a ring of masked men who committed such a crime.

Robert Fontaine both plays Rolando and directs this picture, having enough control to inject his own brand of grit into this small-town drama. Memories and grudges from the past are slowly revealed as Rolando pulls back his history to both come to terms with his lineage and make sense of a world racked by murder. The story progresses with a bit of a slow burn, allowing the case to proceed over the course of months. Doing so gives this film quite a bit of breathing room to find its voice. And it’s mostly there in terms of voicing its themes about division within America’s class and race issues.

It’s just a tad bit sad that Fontaine’s film never really feels as though it’s breaking on something more provocative past just being a serviceable crime picture. All the components are there to keep the tension high enough for the eyeballs rarely to leave the screen. Yet how much of our eyes are taking in the greater context past the thrill of finding the criminals and unearthing a detective’s history? I got some thrills, for sure, but not much more than a mildly entertaining bit of chases, shouts, and brutal discoveries.

Mi America, at the very least, has a refreshing nature in its almost meandering nature to find something a little more in its tense tone. I never felt it quite found its way past the mere murder mystery but the search is an important that I feel any filmmaker pursuing such a subject should embrace. And whether Fontaine exactly found it isn’t so much as important as the hunt. Not all crime dramas are so lucky.