The Politics in Saving Private Perez (2011)

When you combine Scarface (1983), The A Team (2010), with a dose of B-movie Mexican urban western genre, the result is Beto Gomez's Saving Private Perez.

The film follows Julian Perez (played by Miguel Rodarte), "the most powerful man on Earth", and his quest towards finding his brother Juan who is missing in action in Iraq. With the help of his protégé, Perez puts together a clan of texano(cowboy hat)-wearing men with machine guns to help him with this suicidal mission.

The plot calls for an entertaining storyline, politics aside.

But as much as I tried to enjoy the the film, I could not help but to see it through a political context.
The film presents unnecessary reinforcements of Mexican stereotypes. The men in the film are caricatured through violence, "machismo", an exaggerated sense of masculinity with attributes such as physical courage, domination of women, and aggressiveness, thirst for beer, and the glorification of hot sauce. One character thinks of a "caguama" bottle to get through the Middle Eastern heat. In a different occasion, hot sauce is used as a weapon to gain information from the Islamic radicals.

The film surfaces many controversial and political issues that the US is currently facing, including the War in Iraq, The war against drug cartels, and immigration. It fails to present the reality of these issues. Instead, it glorifies organized crime and displays the battlefield in Iraq as a playground. The thing that makes a film like Saving Private Perez borderline-controversial is the neglecting of political anxieties. The film lacks political content. Instead, it runs through them, solely focusing on the rescue mission and the humor of the situational irony taken place. This tactic, however, works as it puts the viewer into the characters' neutral position of the War in Iraq such to the extent that loyalty and the love for family becomes a more important issue in the film.

Saving Private Perez can be enjoyable to watch if you can appreciate raw humor and if you are not easily offended. Miguel Rodarte successfully portrays a powerful, yet charismatic drug lord, proving that he is among the best actors of contemporary Mexican Cinema. What is more enjoyable about the film is the soundtrack. The film features iconic Mexican songs and corridos, with music by Chavela Vargas, Los Tigres del Norte, Los Tucanes de Tijuana, among others.