Audience Member
Looking at the poster I expected a 'shoot um up' type of film. I did some research prior to the film's release and read numerous reviews of the film being 'art house.' Well, it's certainly just that.
Adios Vaya Con Dios is a film that I have not perceived before and it's hard to put my thumb on what to compare it to. It looks aged, as if they shot the film with an old camera and the movie plays like a foreign film. I appreciate the creative craft and the storyline structure. This is what I call refreshing in cinema especially involving a film about gangs in Chicago.
I believe the lead actor and writer may have a Europa touch to his writing and envisioning style. Although this is an American film reviewing the credits everyone is less American. The collaboration is surely a European and Spanish partnership of effort.
This is an independent film that I highly recommend for anyone who loves the art of cinema to check out. It can definitely be a discussion piece afterwards. Bravo!
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/23/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Inspired at times by Alejandro González Iñárritu's early work Amores Perros.
A gangster movie with European rock, that looks like it was filmed in the 70's, filmed with actual gangsters that routes like an art house film. Also, forgot to mention that the lead actor was almost shot by the police while filming. Does this sound like a cluster of disaster? The DVD Release Report called it a "Powerful Piece of Cinema," and I couldn't agree more.
A gangster art house film reminiscent if not inspired at times by Alejandro González Iñárritu's early work Amores Perros. This is the carbon-based effort at socializing real people and real places into a photographic tale. There are moments in the film that performances can be like a bad beer that you just get used to. Eloy Rosales a menace just released from prison can do a better job and convincing me he's a hard gangster, Olmec gang leader Tiger De'Leon should perform the Broadway version and do a musical. Now please realize I'm not making fun here, but there is an enormous mix of gravity. This is what makes every scene and every interval of the film as distinctive as the tattoos lead actor and writer Zachary Laoutides has embellished on his body.
Zachary Laoutides plays Rory King a half Mexican and half white gang elitist. He is the bright star that planet Adios Vaya Con Dios revolves around keeping the film in perfect balance improving any shortcoming the film may galacticly encounter, keeping the movie alive in existence. This is due to the laws of his universe. The makeup in the film is superb by artist Alfredo Leon making sure the Olmecs are no group we ever want to encounter on the streets. The music at moments, a moving ambient score that plucks the chords of the human heart, that weaves in and out with rock music from the United Kingdom and rock bands from Mexico City. The film has two opening credit sequences, why...? Because in this world you can. In this world you can get away with a lot and perhaps we judge this world better then others due to something we have never really witnessed in moviemaking, the harmony of races, cultures, social status and voice in synchronization with one another brought together to humbly entertain us... to humbly say this is our voice.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/14/23
Full Review
Audience Member
A movie that is the first of its kind.
Executive Producer Monica Esmeralda Leon makes her backyard her filmmaking playground. However, this backyard is no easy walk in the park, it's one of the dangerous neighborhoods of Chicago where the Mexican Olmec street gang paint their faces with skulls controlling the cities organized crime. It's a place where the Italians still have small grips, where the police could be unethical, where Olmec gang leaders sexually abuse their recruits, but it's also a place where there is hope.
The film itself is a demonstration of hope. It's a movie that is the first of its kind, a barrio or ghetto unifying despite differences to make a film. The writer and lead actor Zachary Laoutides was the correct choice as the screenplay writer and the lead actor who takes his performance to deep depths. The film is far from a stereotypical gangster film; the performances are varied from street locals to theatrical performers. Laoutides' natural performance makes his character Rory King upraise the film from any of its shortcomings. Rory King is a half Mexican and half Irishman who is caught culturally between his two diverse traditions. We see his struggles to socially survive the entire film.
The slice I find most appealing is watching Rory who is too deep inside the allegiances he serves, these loyalties that he has used in order to endure all this time, now only to come back drawing him further into the world he's trying to escape. It's a nail biter at the end that should be admired by how well Joseph Mennella, Italian wise guy Gio Angeli and Zachary Laoutides make us feel. Much of the film feels like you're watching a documentary, as if it's really happening (in a way you are due to how the film was completed), Rory and Gio give us just that. By the end of the film you want to know more and wouldn't mind another round of street artistry.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/24/23
Full Review
Audience Member
A gangster art house film is born!
Adios vaya con dios gets into a rhythm from the very beginning of the film. It plays like an international art house film, with long musical montages and two opening credit sequences, as if the editor unequivocally liked them both. You can escape with trying newfangled things in independent film and I sense Adios vaya con dios did just that. The blending of professional actors with real gangs, real people from the streets, to mixing the entire film with euro rock, a gangster art house film is born!
Yes, Adios vaya con dios is an art film; it is an experimentation of what happens when you put thugs, gangs and neighborhood residences into a film. One would contemplate the film may be a disaster, maybe even hazardous, nevertheless the movie uses what some people would believe to inevitably become its weakness as its ultimate strength.
We follow lead actor and writer Zachary Laoutides, Rory King, through his odyssey of his plans to skip town only to have his friend Eloy get released from prison tossing his plans of escape out the window. Laoutides gives an almost silent performance authorizing the ghetto to speak for itself; we see his pain and suffering every step of the way within his distraught senses. I speculated why he would have written his part so introverted, but it makes complete logic as so many in the inner cities become the outcasts of society and let their gang in numbers be their voice. What's even worse for Rory King is that he's white.
I appreciated the short-lived performance by Marius Iliescu playing the Olmec gang leader Tiger as well as his young brother, Bones, played my Emmanuel Isaac. I thought both actors warranted some more screen time. One complicating element is that Rory and Tiger are both from the same gang. Tiger's last name is 'De'Leon' so do not confuse it as its own gang affiliation. So, heads up!
The movie plays inventive from start to finish, director and cinematographer Timothy J. Aguado's switching from black and white to color, to his stellar shots of Rory's burning off his tattoos. The film feels like a retro piece of cinema belonging in a foreign film classification with the Spanish narration. To his credit Laoutides' writing keeps a pace that never gets boring moving us from credit sequences, to music video montages, to life and death situations. We care about Rory from the opening scene and feel that he is in the wrong life, the wrong body and dealt the wrong cards.
Although this is a film you may only watch once it plants the seeds for another movie, which may be what Laoutides was going for. The iconic lines from the characters in the film and the overlapping stimulating storylines demands one more chapter.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/21/23
Full Review
Audience Member
'All good in the hood'
The film Adios Vaya Con Dios is an ensemble of performances and a collaborative effort to make the first of its kind, an urban neighborhood film created by a hood or barrio 'Latino ghetto.' At times it works, at times it fundamentally doesn't, however it's 'all good in the hood,' as the film awakens letting the audience comprehend this is a mix of professionals and reality; professional actors and neighborhoods (locals) cooperating collectively together to tell the story of what happens in their streets. It's not flawless, but it doesn't need to be, produced by Monica Esmeralda Leon (her actual neighborhood) she discusses in the behind the scenes she wanted to exhibit the 'beauty and tragedy of her neighborhood,' and she succeeded (note- I encourage everyone to watch the behind the scenes before boarding the film, you will grow to appreciate it much more).
Theater actor Marius Iliescu plays the savage Olmec leader Tiger De'Leon who preys on young men, his performance is over the top, over theatrical, but as I've been saying it works, you want to see more. Eloy Rosales played by Albertho Garcia, just released from prison, is too similar to the lead actor Zachary Laoutides and is lost is shuffle not being able to distinguish himself until the end of the film, 'but it works.' The end of film made me realize Rory was drawn to Eloy's friendship because they were equivalent trying to survive in a fallen world.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/12/23
Full Review
Audience Member
It's urban poetry and experimental film in a dangerous neighborhood.
Artistic with imagination and pleasingly not what I expected. Strange using the terminology art house for a film labeled as a gangster movie, but I challenge that title. It's urban poetry and experimental film in a dangerous neighborhood. One can come to appreciate the film in its art house form. Ave Fenix Pictures used real people, real locations and relied on self-performances to tell stories of the barrio (a Latino ghetto). Well, the great experiment worked and it transcended into Hollywood receiving positive reception. Usually films like this start failing by day one of production or turn out half completed thus spinning into a short film that gets lost inside the shuffle of thousands. Somehow and someway the barrio made it last for ninety-five minutes and keeps you intrigued with the need to always be paying close attention.
My biggest compliment is the intelligence behind the script, if you don't pay attention you won't be able to connect the dots and understand why the world lays so heavily on Rory King's shoulders (writer and actor Zachary Laoutides). If you read some of the fun facts of the film that may have very well been the situation for him in the reality of creating the movie. The superlative storyline in Adios Vaya Con Dios has to do with Rory King and Gio Angeli (Joseph Mennella). The Italian aspect didn't scream cliché and could have been its own entire unconnected film. Rory, a fascinating blend of Irish and Mexican makes you accurately touch how it is to grow up in different worlds. He can genuinely blend into any scene, whether he's beating Italians with bats, playing politics with the Olmec Mexican thugs or debating his Irish father, actor Zachary Laoutides is agile enough to fit into any scenario he's placed inside.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/07/23
Full Review
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