Sin Nombre (2009)

Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. Starring Edgar Flores, Paulina Gaitán, Kristyan Ferrer, Tenoch Huerta Mejía, Gerardo Taracena, Diana García, Luis Fernando Peña, Guillermo Villegas, Héctor Jiménez. [R]

Writer/director Fukunaga’s feature debut uses genre and cultural stereotypes to tell the not-quite-compelling story of two intersecting lives: Honduran teenage girl Gaitán, traveling with a couple of family members in hopes of crossing the border into America, and MS-13 gang member Flores, on the run after killing the gang leader who accidentally murdered his girlfriend. Authenticity, credible performances, and lucid photography make this south-of-the-border crime drama work up to a point. Fukunaga’s observational restraint, however, keeps everything adrift and at arm’s length, a vitality that feels overly meticulous (even curiously bloodless), which does no favors for the unconventional and low-key romance that brews between the main characters, reducing all triumph and tragedy to “just another statistic.” The middle act—spent primarily on a train’s rooftops crowded with aspiring immigrants—works best, freed from the cycle-of-violence gang clichés of the early-going and the unsupported melodrama of its closing chapters. Title translation: “without a name.”

69/100