Reviews & Quotes

As direct as a bullet to the brain, "Sin Nombre" follows two Latino adolescents on a perilous journey to the United States. Willy, a new member of a violent Mexican street gang, boards the northbound freight train to rob the immigrants. Sayra, from Honduras, is riding the rails with her uncle and father, a deportee desperate to get back to his new stateside family. The dream and the nightmare collide as Willy rescues Sayra, wounding a gang mate who is about to rape her. His act of bravery makes him a marked man, and Sayra's grateful insistence on staying at his side puts her directly in harm's way.

This is a stunning feature debut for director Cary Fukunaga. The story borrows from road movies and crime thrillers, but the scenes and situations vibrate with authenticity. There is a "National Geographic" realism to the images of the fearsome, tattooed gangbangers and the destitute migrants camped out in railroad yards. There are moments of sublime beauty as well. The film opens with Willy staring at a mural of a forest ablaze with orange and crimson fall colors. A field of flowers in the same palette rushes by as he rides the rails, but by then he's too worried about outrunning his former gang brothers to notice.

This is a bloody film, but you couldn't tell the story otherwise. These are characters in crisis from the moment we meet them. For a time, they treat each other with respect and compassion, but the realities of poverty and desperation are never far from view. Fukunaga's vision is a challenging blend of pessimism and hope. Halfway through the travelers' train ride, they're chased by cheering children who throw them oranges. Later, they're greeted by another group of kids throwing rocks. Edgar Flores is fine as Willy, showing the pathos of a character who inflicts suffering on others but more on himself, and Paulina Gaitan shines as kind, brave Sayra. 

In one of the opening scenes of "Sin Nombre," we watch as a boy, maybe 11 or 12, is jumped into a gang in southern Mexico. Knocked to the dirt in one punch, he curls into a ball as his new family kicks him again and again. 
 
The leader, Lil Mago, his face black with tattoos, calls out the count: "Uno . . . dos . . . tres." At 13, the beating stops and the boy rises, bloody but grinning from ear to ear. Lil Mago kisses him gently on the forehead. The ritual is complete, and the boy has a new name: El Smiley. 
 
Gang violence and illegal immigration are the topical themes running through "Sin Nombre," the Spanish-language film by American writer-director Cary Fukunaga. They are issues that too often lend themselves to self-righteous polemics, but in his debut feature, Fukunaga mines them for their human stories, not to score rhetorical points. 
 
Lil Mago (Tenoch Huerta) is a bad guy, but he's not a comic-book villain. He's a criminal and a murderer, but he also loves his family, both his young baby at home and the tattooed teens who make up his tribe of warriors. 
 
One of those warriors is El Casper (Edgar Flores), who has just recruited El Smiley (Kristian Ferrer) into the gang but is becoming disaffected toward the tribe. And one day, on a "mission" to rob migrants riding atop a freight train, Lil Mago attempts to rape a teenage girl, and Casper makes a snap decision to stop him - with a machete. 
 
Now Casper is on the run, riding the rails north toward the Texas border, and the girl, a Honduran named Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), determines to stick with him in the (quite mistaken) belief that he is the only one who can keep her safe. 
 
Although different in tone and style, "Sin Nombre" ("Without a Name") could be compared to "Slumdog Millionaire" in that both films use tried-and-true mythic storytelling to open up a rich, realistic vision of a world unfamiliar to their audience. 
 
Most Americans are so used to thinking of illegal immigration as an "issue" that they never stop to wonder about the lives of migrants before they appear at the border. Showing the visual and narrative assurance of a much more experienced director, Fukunaga fills in that gap by bringing his cameras into the barrios and onto the crowded train-tops where hundreds of poor pilgrims gather for the long journey north. 
 
The journey isn't all danger and hardship. In southern Mexico, the migrants are greeted with a rain of fruit tossed by villagers below. Farther north, though, it's a hail of rocks thrown by children shouting, "We don't need your kind." 
 
The script does cut a few corners in the storytelling, but the world of the film is so thickly detailed, its performances so human and compelling, that a few small flaws are easily overlooked. With "Sin Nombre," Fukunaga already has made a name for himself in world cinema.

Tough and beautiful, Cary Fukunaga's Sin Nombre strikes such a stark contrast to last year's overhyped border-crossing drama Under the Same Moon that the two films - both addressing the experiences of Mexicans and Central Americans trying to get to the United States - might as well be from different planets. 

Where Patricia Riggen shamelessly milked Under the Same Moon's melodrama, Fukunaga's startlingly impressive first feature is almost ruthless in its depiction of the brutality and degradation confronting the hidden hordes that cross rivers and hop trains trying to get to the United States. 

Grounded in reportorial research and developed through the Sundance screenwriting lab, Sin Nombre ("without a name") tracks a teenage Honduran, Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), as she travels with her father and uncle through Guatemala and into Mexico, riding atop freight cars like the hoboes of the Great Depression. 

At the same time, in Chiapas, in southern Mexico, a tattooed teenage gangbanger, Casper (Edgar Flores), has his own reasons for following the rails northward. The first jarring 15 minutes or so of Sin Nombre open a window onto Mexican gang culture, the violent initiation of a 12-year-old, and the casual murder of a girl. 

And so Sayra and Casper meet - and it's not meet-cute, believe me. Their paths become inextricably linked. 

Sin Nombre, shot in dazzling widescreen across sun-burnished landscapes and through colorfully run-down towns and cities, is forceful, heart-wrenching stuff. Gaitan and Flores deliver unnervingly natural performances - they don't ask for the audience's sympathy, they just present themselves, young, yearning, and in serious danger of not getting any older.

Rich details make the immigration thriller "Sin Nombre" vivid and haunting. These minor objects — a worn photograph, a creased map, the permanent claims of gang tattoos on young men — hint at writer-director Cary Fukunaga's talent for capturing the human ache in the everyday. Pain and hope are in the details.  

Still, it's Fukunaga's dogged commitment to a story of exile, deliberate and unplanned, that suggest the arrival of a savvy and empathetic storyteller.

Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) lives in Honduras. Her father returns there from the U.S. in order to bring his daughter and his younger brother to the home he's made in New Jersey. He's been gone a long time.

He carries a photo of his new wife and their children, whom Sayra has never met. From the looks Sayra gives her father, his absence is not yet forgiven.  

In the Mexican state of Chiapas, a different family drama unfolds. Casper, a young, tattooed man, recruits 12-year-old Smiley (Kristyan Ferrer). Although Smiley's grandmother has other ideas, the curly- topped youngster is about to be inducted into the local Mara gang.  

Like all psychologically manipulative gangs, the Mara promotes itself as a family. Boss Lil' Mago (Tenoch Huerta Mejía) sweetly cradles an infant clad in a yellow hoodie in his arms as he instructs Smiley on a brutal initiation rite. The boy had already endured one.  

With his light complexion and pelt of thick hair, newcomer Edgar Flores is tremendously watchable as Casper. Like any young man trying to forge a love life separate from the demands of his family, he wants to keep girlfriend Martha Marlene to himself. Like the most intrusive of families, the Mara and Lil' Mago thwart him.  

When his two worlds collide, Casper's life and his place in the gang are upended.  

We know that Casper and Sayra will meet. The parallel setup insists upon it. But Fukunaga makes that meeting of strangers atop a freight train bound for the U.S. an opportunity for redemption, disaster or both.  

"Sin Nombre" means without a name. Yet, this debut feature gives us characters whose plights are unforgettable.  

Shot in rich tones by Adriano Goldman, the movie disturbs with violence and beguiles with glimpses of the Mexican countryside captured from the tops of the freight cars. True to its sense of place, the film is in Spanish with English subtitles.  

"Sin Nombre" is as compassionate as it is beautifully wrought. It reminds us that there is something universal in the suspicious treatment that immigrants receive.  

Central Americans crossing rivers, making their way through brush, hopping trains, have reason to be fearful. Mexico's citizens don't always embrace them. During one part of the journey, kids throw lemons up to the riders. In another, they hurl stones and epithets. There are bandits.  

The story also articulates convincingly what an act of will the journey to the unknown or only imagined can be.  

Before they embark, Sayra's father (Gerardo Taracena) shows her a map of their route. It goes only so far as the line between Mexico and Texas.  

"Where's New Jersey?" she asks.  

Their destination lies far beyond the borders of the map.  

El Norte. The North. It is a lodestar for some of those south of our border, who risk their lives to come here. Sin Nombre, which means "without a name," is a devastating film about some of those who attempt the journey. It contains risk, violence, a little romance, even fleeting moments of humor, but most of all, it sees what danger and heartbreak are involved. It is riveting from start to finish.

The film weaves two stories. One involves Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), a young woman from Honduras who joins her father and uncle in an odyssey through Guatemala and Mexico intended to take them to relatives in New Jersey. The other involves Willy, nicknamed Casper (Edgar Flores), a young gang member from southern Mexico, who joins with his leader and a 12-year-old gang recruit to rob those riding north on the tops of freight cars. Their paths cross. This is an extraordinary debut film by Cary Fukunaga, only 31, who shows a mastery of image and story. He knows the material. He spent time riding on the tops of northward trains; hundreds of hopeful immigrants materialize at a siding and scramble onboard, and the railroad apparently makes little attempt to stop them.

He is also convincing about the inner workings of the terrifying real-life gang named Mara Salvatrucha. Before turning to the story, I want to say something about the look and feel of the film. It was photographed by Adriano Goldman, who used, not hi-def video as you might suspect, but 35mm film, which has a special richness. Fukunaga's direction expresses a desire that seems growing in many young directors, to return to classical composition and editing. Those norms establish a strong foundation for storytelling; there's no queasy-cam for Fukunaga. Ramin Bahrani, director of "Goodbye Solo," is another member of the same generation whose shots call attention to their subject, not themselves.

The story of Sayra, her father and her uncle is straightforward: They are driven to improve their lives, think they have a safe haven in New Jersey and want to go there. Some elements of their journey reminded me of Gregory Nava's great indie epic El Norte (1983). The journey in that film was brutal; in this one, it is forged in hell.

That hell is introduced by Fukunaga in the club rooms of the gang, whose members are fiercely tattooed, none more than Lil' Mago (Tenoch Huerta Mejia), the leader, whose face is covered like a war mask. Casper is a member of the gang, more or less by force; he brings 12-year-old Smiley (Kristyan Ferrer) to a meeting, and the kid is entranced by the macho BS. The three board one of the northbound trains to rob the riders, and that's when Casper meets Sayra and their fates are sealed.

Smiley, so young, with a winning smile, is perhaps the most frightening character, because he demonstrates how powerful an effect, even hypnotic, gang culture can have on unshielded kids. In his eyes, Lil' Mago looms as a god, the gang provides peer status and any values Smiley might have had evaporate. The initiation process includes being savagely beaten and kicked by gang members, and then proving himself by killing someone. Smiley is ready and willing.

There are shots here of great beauty. As the countryside rolls past, and the riders sit in the sun and protect their small supplies of food and water, there is sometimes the rhythm of weary camaraderie. I was reminded of Hal Ashby's Bound for Glory. Kids along the tracks are happy to see the riders getting away with something, and at one place, they throw them oranges. At stations, the riders jump off and detour around the guards and then board the train again as it leaves town.

Sin Nombre is a remarkable film, showing the incredible hardships people will endure in order to reach El Norte. Yes, the issue of illegal immigration is a difficult one. When we encounter an undocumented alien, we should not be too quick with our easy assumptions. That person may have put his life on the line for weeks or months to come here, searching for what we so easily describe as the American dream. What inspired Fukunaga, an American, to make this film, I learned, was a 2003 story about 80 illegals found locked in a truck and abandoned in Texas. Nineteen died.

The script for Sin Nombre could've easily been passed to the Three Amigos, also known as Mexican directors Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth), Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros) and Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mama Tambien). Any of those virtuosic, big-name auteurs would've made a pulse-pounder praised by critics but gummed up by stylized direction, shaky camerawork and needless narrative acrobatics.

In the careful, confident hands of California-born, NYU-schooled director Cary Joji Fukunaga, Sin Nombre is instead an elegant, heartbreaking fable, equal parts Shakespearean tragedy, neo-Western and mob movie but without the pretension of those genres. How strange it is to praise an American director (especially one making his first feature, with much at stake, in Mexico) for his restraint. Fukunaga, who also wrote the script, has made one of the most memorable directorial debuts in recent memory.

Sin Nombre deftly weaves two stories of desperation. The first centers on Willy (charismatic newcomer Edgar Flores), an introspective Mexican teenager beginning to chafe against the murderous strictures of his gang. The second follows Sayra (disarmingly played by Paulina Gaitan), a Honduran girl stowing away on a train through Mexico in the hopes of sneaking across the Texas border. As their fates collide and diverge, the film tenderly considers the rubs of a life lived on the verge of something -- on the verge of death, of hope, of honor and dishonor, damnation and redemption.

Sin Nombre is pure filmmaking: a great story told in beautiful images.

One of the most impressive feature directing debuts I've seen in a long time is Cary Joji Fukunaga's Sin Nombre, which is in the dramatic competition. This character-driven thriller about illegal Honduran immigrants who travel atop trains on their way to the United States -- centering on a romance between two teenagers, one a Mexican fleeing gang members who want to kill him -- drew a standing ovation when it showed at the Eccles Auditorium on Sunday. Fukunaga, who grew up in California but now lives in Brooklyn Heights, directed a short in NYU's master's program that won him a student academy award. I met this extremely talented guy -- and his male star Edgar Flores, a young Hondouran who had never made a movie before -- at a dinner thrown by Focus Features, which bankrolled this gripping Spanish-language feature and plans to release it in U.S. theaters beginning in March. Focus CEO James Schamus called Sin Nombre a "big f-- you to the idea of movies aimed at liberals who feel sorry for immigrants."

There is much strange beauty in the poverty and desperation captured by Sin Nombre, an evocative and impressive first feature from writer-director Cary Joji Fukunaga tracing both the journey north taken by so many from Mexico and Central America and the gang violence that stunts the lives of the many others who stay behind.

This thriller/love story is, in a way, a simple one, though Fukunaga plays many emotional notes before he is finished, with sentiment that is restrained rather than indulged.

Flores gives Willy a poignant strength, a quiet dignity and a knowing resignation that stays with you long after the movie has ended. Gaitan's Sayra is heartbreaking in her hope.

There is bitter and breathtaking truth in the story and in the story- telling, which won Fukunaga the directing and cinematography award in the dramatic competition at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. He rode the trains for days himself before making the movie, and in Sin Nombre, he pulls you up there alongside him.

By Hollywood standards Sin Nombre is a very small movie, shot on a tight budget in Mexico, but it's a very big deal. This astonishing debut feature announces the arrival of a lavishly gifted filmmaker, Cary Joji Fukanaga. (He's California-born, of a Swedish-American mother and a Japanese-American father.) The subject is immigration, the language is Spanish -- with good English subtitles -- the scope is epic and the achievement, though solidly grounded in conventional storytelling, is a revelation.

The images are stunning -- there's a sense of whole populations on the move -- and all the more so for being shot, by Adriano Goldman, in 35mm color. (The use of film cameras instead of digital equipment was a crucial aesthetic choice that contrasts grinding squalor with graphic grandeur.)"
"Within that scheme, the camera makes vivid discoveries: chilling gang rituals; a national gang network of cell phones, covert spotters and secret signs; a Mexican response to Central American freight-train riders that ranges from tossing oranges to throwing rocks. And within the harrowing narrative lies the affecting beginnings of a love story."

The filmmaker directs his actors -- some of them seasoned professionals, some of them in front of the camera for the first time -- with an absolute authority that's absolutely invisible. Scenes play as if caught on the fly by a documentarian. (One of the movie's most conspicuous strengths is its quasi-documentary detail.) "Sin Nombre" makes no judgments on immigration as a political issue. Mr. Fukanaga's purpose is to evoke the immigrants' experience, which he does with such eloquence and power as to inspire awe.

Hailed as a revelation at Sundance, is a gripping tale of redemption and flight.

The movie is impressively directed by newcomer Cary Joji Fukunaga, who nabbed the directing prize and became the festival’s It boy.  And no wonder.  He has a knack for vibrant images, a delicate way with actors, and the ability to make a thriller feel as true as a documentary.

4 stars (out of 4)

Sin Nombre is a powerful, wrenching thriller that weaves together several absorbing stories set in Central America. It also is the most moving and well-told saga of Latin American immigrants bound for the USA since 1983's El Norte.

First-time filmmaker Cary Joji Fukunaga spent time riding cargo trains in Central America to research the film he wrote and directed.

His efforts paid off. The film has a documentary-style realism about it and a haunting sense of the gauntlet faced by migrants, as well as the far-reaching implications of gang violence.

That this is Fukunaga's first film is astonishing, given its sharp script, technical proficiency and suspenseful pacing. The ensemble cast is top-notch.

The trek, which entails hopping freight trains and sleeping in ditches, collides with the lawlessness of Lil' Mago, Casper and Smiley. The course of their entwined lives is fascinating, sometimes tragic and always unpredictable.

Sin Nombre, in Spanish with English subtitles, is an epic and edge-of the-seat thriller. The film's lyrical ending, with a teary smile on Sayra's young face, is understated and moving, adding redemption and hope to an intense tale of brutality, cruel misfortune and unexpected courage.

Sin Nombre, from first time feature writer/director Cary Fukunaga, tells two powerful intersecting stories of immigration through Mexico to the US border.

“The visual intensity of the action is eye catching. The sweeping Mexican countryside becomes a character in the film. The combination of professional actors and locals is effective and adds to the unique telling of this immigrant story. Interesting to note, the film won awards at the Sundance Film Festival for both Directing and Cinematography, and for good reason. I know it’s only March, but Sin Nombre is the best film I’ve seen so far this year. See it!

The best movie I’ve seen in 2009.