Acorazado
- Year:2010
- Rating:E
- Director:Álvaro Curiel
- Cast:Camille Natta, Silverio Palacios, Salvador Sánchez
- Release Date:October 27, 2011
- Distributor:Hola Mexico Film Festival
- Running time:102 minutes
- Film Worth:$13.00
- FILMINK rates movies out of $20 - the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Clever, satirical premise let down due to its sitting on the fence conclusion.
Acorazado is the first feature film from Mexican television writer and director, Álvaro Curiel. Ignored by his family and ridiculed by his friends, Silverio (Silverio Palacioson) spends his time composing political speeches and spraying them at passers by. Although outrageous and immature, he is utterly endearing in a Mexican, Roberto Benigni kind of way. When Silverio decides he wants a better life, he seeks it in the tried and true American Dream.
Silverio is convinced by a friend that if he washes up in Florida claiming emancipation from communism, he'll be welcomed by the American Government. Thus he sets sail in his ‘Acorazado' (battleship in Spanish) - a homemade life raft topped with his VW Beetle. Bad weather and worse navigational skills land Silverio on the beaches of Cuba instead. Now he must improvise a new speech - the first Mexican seeking Socialist refuge from Capitalism.
The promise of a Mexican Life is Beautiful, dries up with Silverio in Cuba. Where Benigni built Guido's child-like humour to contrast the horrors of anti-Semitism, Álvaro Curiel, loses his way. Silverio seems stuck in the middle of socialism and communism and not as a clever device for proving either or neither. Instead, it feels like Curiel himself can't decide, so neither does Silverio.
If only Acorazado could have maintained the smart, satirical premise with which it began. Unfortunately it was more like Silverio's journey, a little lost and lacking in direction.
