6-09-06, 11:01 am

JEFF SAWTELL points out the flaws in a bloody gangster movie filmed on the Caracas streets.

IN the prologue to Secuestro Express there is a montage of newsreel images of urban unrest in 2002, including a clip of a man shooting from a Caracas road bridge at some anti-Chavez demonstrators.

In a fictional film, such a scene might pass unnoticed. Not so in Secuestra Express. The person pictured was Rafael Cabrices and he was responding after an armed attack by the US-sponsored opposition.

In short, the attack was by anti-Chavez counter-revolutionaries using snipers. This has been attested by both the makers of the documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and journalist John Pilger.

Cabrices was so offended by the scene in the film that he decided to take legal action. Only his untimely death from a heart attack deterred him from doing so. Never mind. The anti-Chavez conspiracy was revealed.

Obviously, using such footage questions the motivations of the writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz, never mind the veracity of his subsequent fantasy film set in contemporary Caracas.

Like many counter-revolutionary dissidents before him, he could characterise any critical comments by the Chavez regime as attempts at censorship, thus attracting international publicity.

Not that his film has been censored. Jakubowicz was too clever by half. He didn't reveal his intentions before the film was made, even claiming that he was a Chavez supporter to get backing.

Sadly, some of Chavez's spokesmen fell foul of the trap, Vice-President Jose Vincente Rangel allegedly calling it 'a miserable little film with no artistic value … presenting a deforming image of Venezuela.'

Worse, a TV channel set up by Chavez to counter the pernicious influence of the 95 per cent of the capitalist media is alleged to have described him as being part of an Hollywood-zionist conspiracy.

The film was not endorsed as the official Venezuelan entrant at international film festivals, including the Academy Awards, despite the fact that the producers claim that it is the highestgrossing film in Venezuelan history.

However, as ever, the issue has provided ammunition for those seeking to slander socialists, never mind that the film-makers were distorting images to present fiction as fact.

Jakubowicz couldn't have paid for better publicity, never mind a gilt-edged reference to follow up his fortune in Tinseltown like so many before him.

Obviously, if you didn't know any of this, then Secuestro Express might be seen as yet another violent south American film illustrating the consequences of extreme poverty and social deprivation.

It has already courted comparison with Fernando Meirelles's City of God, an unworthy suggestion since it lacks the former's compassion, never mind sympathy for the social struggle.

It seems more concerned to exploit violence for violence's sake, seeking to appeal to those who get a vicarious pleasure in watching people being tortured, raped and ritually humiliated.

It features Mia Maestro and Jean Paul Leroux as an upper-middle-class couple who are treated to a terrifying tour of Caracas after being taken for ransom by three crooks.

The three gangsters awaiting their payout are played by three of Venezuela's foremost rappers, Carlos Molina, Pedro Perez and Carlos Madera. The cast also includes the Panamanian salsa singer and award-winning actor Ruben Blades as an anxious father.

We don't see him much as he is there simply to signify a parent, with the kidnappers delivering their demands in the sort of language that's designed to terrorise him and anybody with a nervous disposition.

Interludes include a visit to a gay drug pusher (Ermahn Ospina), but only to introduce a little scenic sadism, before suggesting that the upper class have secrets that they would like to keep in the closet.

Jakubowicz does attempt to flesh out his characters, using split screens to contrast the captors' cruelty to their hostages with the humanity that they display towards their loved ones.

Why is another question, unless, of course, he's suggesting that they represent the people, one of their number later being characterised as a romantic seeking to rescue the woman.

A woman, that is, who looks and lives like a film star, but can't understand that it's not enough for her to give a little of her time to working in a free clinic for the poor while driving round in a flash car.

Still, it's not sustained, as Jakubowicz ratchets up the action with an accompanying hip hop beat, the violence increasing exponentially, the conclusion proving to be a proverbial anti-climax.

To emphasise its ideological vacuity, it opens with a scene, which is later repeated, that evokes the reactionary Michael Cimino's film The Deer Hunter - a prisoner being dispatched in a perversion of Russian roulette.

Obviously, the excessive violence has been characterised as a social metaphor, the problem being that there's no attempt to illustrate that the current revolution is trying to redress the social imbalance.

While that would be fine in a strictly fictional film, it's dishonest in a film that Jakubowicz insists is a political parable, the postscript proclaiming that one half of the world is starving, while the other half is obese.

Jakubowicz suggests that you either 'fight the monster or invite him to dinner' and that the 'rich and poor must work together for a better Venezuela.'

Well, while Jakubowicz might want to dine out with corporate capitalists, Chavez has made it clear that most Venezuelans are no longer satisfied to share a slice of the cake. Instead, they're in the process of taking control of the means of production.