Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) Review
By David Kempler
Crooked politicians and frogs
Director Jason Kohn couldn't have learned the business under a better tutor. He worked for the king of documentaries, Errol Morris. He served as a research assistant on Morris' Oscar winner, "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara". Kohn has his work cut out for him trying to follow in Morris' footsteps but for a first attempt at documentary filmmaking he does a pretty fair job.
"Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)" examines corruption in Brazilian politics, specifically Sao Paulo, in an unusual way. Kohn tries to look at a serious topic in a comical way, a sort of winking of the eye at the audience who is in on the joke. Morris is a master of this technique. Kohn has a good grasp of it but he is not Morris, at least not yet.
The film focuses on frog farming, a crooked politician and kidnapping, and does this through a series of talking head interviews, often with translators doing their job on film. Sounds a bit odd, eh? "Manda Bala" pendulums back and forth between serious and funny a bit too much, however. The result is an uneven telling of a story where you're not quite sure how to react to what you are watching. One of the problems is that it does not really break any breathtakingly new stories. We've all heard of the kidnapping as a way of life in Brazil, and where isn't there corruption? On the plus side is an excellent soundtrack of very varied music.
Kohn has a good future in documentaries if that is the direction where he chooses to head. For now, let's say that he has sent us a very high-end spitball. Maybe he has some bullets in his holster that he will fire at us at a later date. I sure hope so.
