Review: Cronicas

Cronicas isn't your usual action-packed, good-guy-tracks-down-serial-killer flick. It's a serious examination of journalistic ethics and the truth of what we see on television. John Leguizamo stars as Manolo Bonilla, a television journalist for a wildly popular news show based out of Miami. Manolo is in Ecuador on the trail a serial killer known as 'The Monster of Babahoyo", who has killed over 150 children throughout South America.

The story opens with a man washing himself in a river and bleaching a shirt in a bowl. We next see the man driving his truck into a village, where Manolo, his producer Marisa (Leonor Watling) and cameraman Ivan (José María Yazpik) are filming the funeral of three of The Monster's victims. During the funeral, while the families mourn their children, who were sexually assaulted, tortured and then murdered, Manolo and his team whisper about getting an interview with one of the mothers, Marisa takes a cell phone call, and Manolo scopes the scene for shots he wants Ivan to catch.

The man in the truck is stopped by the funeral procession, and a young boy runs up to him yelling "Papi! Papi!". The man's son was a friend of one of the murder victims, and their class came to the funeral. Soon all the schoolchildren are piling into the man's truck for a ride back to the school. Meanwhile, Manolo has cornered the twin brother of one of the victims to interview him. The boy gets scared and runs off, and darts out in front of the truck. The boy is hit and killed.

The crowd instantly turns into a mob, pulling the man from his truck and beating him. The father of the dead boy, distraught at now losing two sons, pummels the driver, pours gasoline on him, and sets him on fire. He manages to put himself out, and his pregnant wife runs in and throws her arms around him to protect him. The police stand around doing nothing, and finally it is Manolo who saves the man from the angry mob - captured on film. The driver and the father of the dead boys are both hauled off to jail, and by the next day, when the story runs on Manolo's TV show, he is a hero for saving the man's life.

When Manolo and his crew go to the prison to do a follow-up story with the father of the dead boys, Manolo is approached by the man he saved, Vinicio Cepeda (Damián Alcázar), who asks Manolo to run a story about his plight to help him get out of prison. At first, Manolo refuses, but then Vinicio tells him he has information about The Monster, and he will give it to Manolo in exchange for his help.

Thus begins a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse, as Manolo crosses ethical boundary after ethical boundary in his pursuit of the truth about the serial killer, and Vinicio's wife begins to fear there is more to her husband than meets the eye. Manolo becomes convinced that Vinicio didn't just encounter the killer - he is the killer, and he becomes determined to get the man to confess on tape so that he can be the hero who caught The Monster. Manolo's head is so filled with delusions of his own grandeur, he refuses to cooperate with the police or tell them what he knows until after he gets the confession.

Cronicas tackles the question of ethics in journalism - when is a reporter obliged to tell law enforcement information that could help them solve a case? Where are the lines between good and evil? As Manolo goes deeper into trying to get his story, does he inadvertently become evil himself, in his refusal to help the police stop the man he believes is a child killer? The greatest irony is that Manolo's show is called "An Hour of Truth", and Manolo is concealing the truth to get the story.

Leguizamo is a multi-faceted actor, and his performance in Cronicas is outstanding. He perfectly captures both Manolo's ego and uncertainty as the moral stakes grow higher and higher. Watling is great in her role as Manolo's producer and lover - she is the moral compass of the group, the one who wrestles the most with doubts over the path they are taking in pursuit of the story. But the real standout of the film is Alcázar, who delves into the mind of a monster for a truly creepy performance. Whether or not Vinicio is The Monster is not even the point of the story - Manolo believes he is, and the ethics around how he handles the situation is what the heart of Cronicas is all about.

Cronicas definitely wasn't the film I was expecting to see. The trailer sells it as more of a thriller film - Leguizamo pursuing a dangerous serial killer - than a film about journalistic ethics. That's not to say I didn't like the film, though; I was on the edge of my seat from start to finish. The ending wasn't what I was expecting at all, and after all the build-up and excitement, it was a bit of a let-down.

Everyone around me was saying, "Wait - that was it? That's how it ends?" as the final credits rolled, and that's pretty much how I felt about it. After all the tension and nerve-wracking moments, I wanted some resolution. Real life doesn't always have endings neatly wrapped up and tied with pretty ribbons, though, and neither does Cronicas. This is a dark and disturbing film. In the end, there is no truth, no happy ending; there is only a killer, his victims, and tragic results of one man's ego.