![]() ![]() But they don’t carry the chutzpah of this kind of visual thread throughout the rest of the pic, and so its initial impact ends up falling flat. Olmos and his veteran cinematographer Reynaldo Villalobos ( Breaking Bad, Love and Basketball, 9 to 5) experiment with time-lapsed images of a mysterious oil-like substance being submerged in water that are interesting enough. ![]() But even for non-Spanish speakers, Santiago’s cool Grandpa snark is hard to miss and even harder not to love.īut the film lacks coherence at times. That there is no subtitling suggests that Olmos wants to subvert the idea of Spanish as a “foreign” language and make much-needed room for Latinx moviegoers to see themselves in the story. He moves seamlessly between speaking English and Spanish no matter whether he is talking to Stern, Stern’s lawyer Ralph or his buddies at the bar. He is a self-described anarchist who also loves snapping selfies throughout the day. Olmos’ Santiago, an immigrant from Mexico who has worked for Fred for 30 years, is the kind of character that in another pic wouldn’t be this multi-dimensional. The significant acting chops of this trio of leads is the primary reason the film is worth seeing. The playful sparring that Strathairn does with both Olmos and Sheen feels like everything you want to see from seasoned actors at this stage in their careers, and the dialogue always rings truest when Strathairn, Olmos and Sheen get to play against one another. Olmos balances a grim tale of corporate exploitation, environmental degradation and the plight of the American farmer with delightful buddy-comedy pairings. The Devil Has a Name is a whistleblower drama a la Erin Brockovich that also wants to be a classic noir whodunit.
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