Boxers Make Good and Other Cliches in The Kid: Chamaco

Details

The Kid: Chamaco
Directed by Miguel Necoechea
Opens August 6, Village East

Related Content

• Into Eternity
  December 7, 2011
• Martin Sheen, Traveling in his Son's Footsteps in The Way
  October 5, 2011
• Loosies
  January 11, 2012
• I Got a Call From Hillary Clinton
  November 1, 2010
• Raising Cain in Todd Haynes's Mildred Pierce
  March 23, 2011

More About

• Umberto Eco
• Casablanca (Movie)
• Michael Madsen
• Michael Curtiz
• Martin Sheen

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

In his famous essay on Casablanca, Umberto Eco explained that film’s appeal in terms of the interplay—the “conversation”—among its numerous platitudes. “Two clichés make us laugh,” he writes, “A hundred clichés move us.” An apt characterization, perhaps, of the experience of taking in Michael Curtiz’s classic, but it scarcely speaks to the majority of films comprised of hackneyed narrative tropes. It certainly doesn’t characterize Miguel Necoechea’s The Kid: Chamaco, a decidedly unmoving boxing picture which gives us, for starters, such played-out creations as the ghetto kid from an abusive family who sees sports as the way out, the washed-up prize-fighter looking for one more chance, and the do-gooder atoning for a past mistake. Necoechea’s film, a U.S.-Mexican co-production starring Alex Perea as young would-be boxing champ Abner alongside such American stalwarts as Martin Sheen and Michael Madsen, is so determined to juggle as many narrative elements as possible that it never properly focuses on any single one. Instead, we’re treated to subplots involving Abner’s meth-addicted girlfriend and a romance between his prostitute sister and his trainer that leads to a scene of such melodramatic absurdity that it negates any remaining shred of narrative credibility the film had managed to retain.