2015 ‘600 Millas’ Directed by Gabriel Ripstein
Arnulfo Rubio smuggles weapons from Arizona to Mexico for a drug cartel, but he is being investigated by agent Harris. When agent Harris blows his covers, he and Arnulfo end up in a journey where he will be the hostage of this young criminal.
600 millas, 600 Milhas
600 Miles is written as a thriller on weapons smuggling in the Mexico/USA border and directed by Arturo Ripstein’s son Gabriel in a naturalistic detailed oriented approach that couldn’t be further from genre. The tension can be compelling and Ripstein gets good performances from Krystian Ferrer and Tim Roth as the young smuggler and american agent that ends his hostage. Characters interactions are often trite and the initial points about how easy it is for Mexican cartels to legally buy guns in US end up getting lost in the middle of the road movie mechanics. Third act amps up the violence not always for the best. Ripstein is better known for producing Michel Franco’s vile movies and the connection is obvious (that awful final scene seem to come straight from a Franco movie), but this has a much better dramatic shape even if remains a limited experiment.
Original Title: 600 Millas
Year of Release: 2015
Genres: Thriller; Drama
Director: Gabriel Ripstein
Writers: Gabriel Ripstein, Issa López
Main Cast: Tim Roth, Kristyan Ferrer, Harrison Thomas, Mónica del Carmen
600 Miles is a solid dramatic thriller that puts a bigger emphasis on slow pacing, character work, and a pedantic and borderline procedural twist on a narrative about gun smuggling into Mexico, instead of being about cheap thrills. I enjoyed it enough, it is a very confident first feature from Gabriel Ripstein and it features really good performances from Roth and Ferrer. Wouldn't say that you have to go out of your way to watch it, but if you like the type of dramas that Michel Franco and his fellow Mexican filmmakers have been doing, then 600 Miles is worth a watch.
PARENTAL GUIDANCE
Violence & Gore: 7.5
Sex & Nudity: 2
Drugs & Profanity: 3
Intensity & Horror: 4
We got the US-Mexico border. Smuggling guns is a young Mexican man that ends up on a road trip with an ATF agent on his back. Tim Roth is great as always. Love how natural this thriller flows. Ripstein Jr.is gonna be a hell of a director!
I was really enjoying 600 Millas. REALLY enjoying it. And I thought I had it pegged. The fact that a young man can buy cases of bullets and then is only asked for ID when he also requests two packets of cigarettes – oh yes, this was going to be a look at the damage caused by guns and youngsters making easy money from gun crime. I was wrong. It’s actually a thrilling road movie, for the most part, before delivering an ending that lifts it up from very good to great.
Tim Roth plays Hank Harris, an ATF agent who doesn’t come into the movie until the tail end of the first act. He’s just about to arrest a…
I got with the flow of this independent Tim Roth film. Follows a weapon smuggler and a undercover cop on their journey. Easy to follow, not that many thrills, but not too underplayed either. Felt authentic enough to at least capture some of the imagination even if it is a small film.
600 Miles is a slow burning, documentary-style thriller which stars Tim Roth as Hank Harris, an ATF agent who finds himself taken hostage by young Mexican gunrunner, Arnulfo (Kristyan Ferrer) during a botched arrest. The pair are soon heading over the border to Mexico where Arnulfo plans to hand Hank over to his cartel kingpin uncle (Noé Hernández) who he is understandably eager to impress.
This is Roth's second Mexican film, having played the palliative nurse in the critically acclaimed Cronica (aka Chronic) the director of which, Michel Franco, produces here. But it's interesting to note that Roth doesn't appear until twenty minutes into this eighty minute film; the first quarter being devoted to Ferrer and his Caucasian partner, Carson…
Something of a distribution oddity: a Mexican arthouse film that's being marketed towards the mainstream Mexican-American audience (it even had Spanish subtitles for the English dialogue). It's a Michel Franco production, for chrissake, directed by Gabriel Ripstein, who was a producer on Franco's last film. Ripstein has a similar style as his cohort, but he's clearly where the real talent lies. I recommend going into this movie completely cold, as I did (I knew Tim Roth was in it, but that's about it ... and that was enough for me). It's gloriously unpredictable from beginning to end -- I kept thinking I knew where it was going, and was gratifyingly proven wrong each time. It's ultimately a very sad movie, for reasons that aren't at all apparent until the end ... and then it's like, "Oh, yes, of course."
“American” Tim Roth is an ATF agent who botches an arrest and gets taken hostage by a scared, queer Mexican kid who plans to take Roth to his scary criminal uncle. It’s a relatively bare bones production, which I enjoy, and the dialogue is a Spanish/English mix (with I think more of the former than the latter). The time spent on character development is lovely, I liked the detail of Roth owing knowledge about blood stain removal to his wife, whom he refers to as “a handyman,” and the slow discovery that the boy’s not-so-secret-homosexuality has placed him near the bottom of the family chain, making him eager to prove himself.
Of note here, in my opinion, is the camerawork,…
This movie had a bit of a sicario feel to it. In the beginning it was a little bit slow but then it turned into more of a drama thriller as The descent across the border continued.
I remember leaving the theater after watching sicario and feeling like I needed a shower to wipe all the dirt crime and blood off of me. I felt a little bit like that in this movie as well.
The ending was probably the most interesting part. It was a bit mellow but expected.
