Desierto

Director Jonás Cuarón (who collaborated with his father Alfonso on Gravity) centers on a man filled with hatred and a desire to kill. Sam (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) drives his heavy-duty truck into the wilds separating Mexico and the U.S., bringing his high-powered rifle and hunting dog Tracker on a mission to wipe out anyone trying to cross the border. His quarries are two groups of refugees traveling across the landscape after their truck breaks down. Sam has no difficulty picking off the first bunch in a bloody massacre, and then he turns his attention to the second, which he and Tracker whittle down systematically until only two survivors remain—Moises (Gael García Bernal) and a young woman (Alondra Hidalgo). There is no question where Cuarón's sympathies lie, but Desierto offers little in the way of nuance or subtext, instead presenting a viscerally exciting cat-and-mouse chase. The broad, desolate vistas of the desert southwest provide often breathtaking widescreen images, and the film features some genuinely nail-biting sequences of characters rushing headlong through the windswept landscape or clinging to rocky cliffs and craggy outcrops. One could argue that this is a superficial treatment of a serious subject, but as a sheer exercise in adrenaline-rush filmmaking, it works well. Recommended. (F. Swietek)