Victor (Celos Franco), is a 17-year-old who is a sort of freelance wheelbarrow operator. It is certainly an occupation I am unfamiliar with. He competes with others for business in Asunción, Paraguay's Municipal Market, a fairly large bustling area, filled with low-level merchants and questionable characters.
When one of his competitors is late with his wheelbarrow for a pick-up, Victor is hastily selected to substitute. His assignment is to take seven wooden boxes in his wheelbarrow and roam around with them for a while, until they will call him with further instructions. Victor, however, does not own a phone, so one is loaned to him, which greatly pleases Victor. In this section of town, owning a cell phone is an unbelievable luxury, even to some of the local policemen.
It is very clear that whatever Victor is carrying is valuable in some way and probably involves something very illegal. While Victor is wandering around, police are after him, as well as the wheelbarrow guy who was originally scheduled for the job, and he is not happy about losing the assignment. He is angry enough about it to offer cash to people to kill Victor.
The rest of "7 Boxes" is all about everyone chasing everyone else and it is a very tense setting that the directors have managed to create out of this relatively simple story. At its best, it reminded me a bit of "City of God", an excellent examination of life inside an extremely poor section of Brazil.
The problem here, though, is a very bad lack of consistency. Too many scenes feel amateurish, especially those featuring one of the higher-ups of the criminal group. He looks like Ben Stiller wearing coke-bottle eyeglasses and appears to be wearing a hairpiece designed to make him look bald. All of his scenes play like comedy and I am unsure if they are supposed to be comic relief, but I got the feeling they were meant to be taken seriously. Whatever the intent, those scenes destroy the overall flow.
The other sometimes negative was the camera work. Parts are shot in what appears to be stop-action techniques that work a whole lot better in animation than in live action.
Despite these criticisms, I couldn't help but like "7 Boxes" for its grittiness and the times where everything works wonderfully. As I mentioned earlier, this thriller has some great minutes of tension sprinkled throughout, and if a thriller thrills, it is doing something right. I will give this one a review of 3.5 boxes.
| Movie title | 7 Boxes |
|---|---|
| Release year | 2012 |
| MPAA Rating | NR |
| Our rating | |
| Summary | From Paraguay comes the tale of a young man carrying something valuable in his wheelbarrow that everyone wants. It is a thriller that sometimes thrills. |
