Sin Nombre

Sin Nombre

Sin Nombre was hard for me to watch. It was very depressing, almost like watching a movie about the holocaust. I compare it to movies like that because they are depressing, and they usually end depressing. The ending of this movie was not what I expected, but I also think that the director Cary Fukunaga wanted to give this movie a sense of reality, the reality of gang life and crossing the American boarder.

 

The plot of Sin Nombre has two different stories that combine together. One is of a gangster named Willy/Casper, and his life in the gang. He brings a young friend into the gang, whose name is Smiley because he always smiles. Casper brings Smiley along one day to meet his “girlfriend” and the gang finds out and is not to happy about it. So the gang leader kills her, mostly because Casper loves her and lied to the gang about having a girlfriend. Casper is raged by this, and bottles his anger towards the gang leader. Later, the leader takes Smiley and Casper on a trip to rob the immigrants who are trying to flea to America by train. The leader tries to rape a teenager, and Casper furious with the leader already, cuts his head off and pushes him on the tracks. Smiley runs away and tells the other gang members. The gang puts a hit on Casper through out all of Latin America, and promises that they will kill him. While this story of Casper and the gang is going on, through scenes going back and forth, the story of Sayra is being told. Sayra is a teenager who lives in Honduras, and reunites with her father and uncle. They convince her to take the trip and escape to New Jersey with them for a better life. It shows the struggle of their trip, and how hard it is to travel through Mexico safely. The girl Casper saved from getting raped was Sayra, and Sayra feels safe around him. She also remembered that a psychic told her that she would make it to America by the hands of the Devil, and she feels that Casper is her answer. Is Casper her answer, or just trouble?

 

It was hard watching this movie for me. There was so much poverty shown throughout all the countries of Latin America. There was lots of gang violence, and little kids killing people to just feel apart of gangs. Seeing families and people struggle to get to America and get a better life was very hard to watch. They sacrifice everything, and most of the time it gets them nowhere. It was hard to see people try so hard for nothing. It defiantly showed me a world I did not want to see, but knew existed. It really made me count my blessings, and be grateful that I was born to a good family in America, and blessed with the life that I have.

 

Would I recommend this movie to others? That is a hard question to answer. I am glad I saw this movie in the sense that it is something good to have under the belt, but I don’t know if its worthy enough to rush to the theatres to see. I would recommend people not to see this, mostly because it is a sad and heavy movie to watch, and the ending is very hard to watch too. It is not an uplifting movie, and you don’t walk out feeling good about yourself. So I would say go see something else if you felt like seeing this flick.