The Brute

Made near the beginning of his Mexican filmmaking exile, future surrealist Luis Buñuel's 1952 The Brute offers a melodramatic indictment of his adopted homeland's treatment of the poor. The film stars Pedro Armendáriz as Bruto, a brawny enforcer who agrees to help evict proud peasant tenants so that a slumlord can sell his tenement property to the highest bidder. After accidentally killing one of the peasant leaders, Bruto falls for two women—the daughter of the dead man, and the oversexed spouse of his boss. When the tenants learn of the scare tactics that resulted in the fatality, they vow revenge, putting Bruto's job, relationships, and even his life in jeopardy. Aside from an unusual sequence inside a slaughterhouse, and the elegant use of black and white cinematography, Buñuel's The Brute features none of the director's later trademark eccentricities. But as a potboiler full of intrigue and passion, this is a delightful—if also thematically dark—film. Recommended. (B. Gibron)