User Reviews

Let's be clear from the outset, this is a dark, bleak and violent movie. The episodes in-between the on-screen savagery, consist of a lot of regret, anxiety and a deep, deep sadness.

Having said that, I also think that this is one of the most important movies I have seen in quite awhile, buried unfortunately amidst the clutter of beginning-of-the-year garbage releases and the upcoming summer blockbusters. I wish this movie had a much higher profile, in fact I think that this movie should be required viewing in high-schools all across the US and Canada.

It should also be seen by all those people who think about immigrants as a pest and as parasites who come to take away their jobs and be a drain on their resources, abusing the social system or whatever. The same people who watch Lou Dobbs and his "one man crusade" to save America from the invading plague of illegals. The minute-men who gleefully think that the wall now separating the US from Mexico is the greatest thing since the pyramids. The same people that after having spewed their vitriol, hatred and bile against immigrants have no problem with Juan mowing their lawn and Consuela looking after their snot-nosed mortally obese children, and Miguel picking-up all the s*it they leave in the streets, malls and every other place one can throw garbage in.

Maybe, just maybe, watching this movie will at least give them a glimpse into the lives, backgrounds and destinies of these people, who are abused, mistreated and forgotten by almost everybody, people who basically have come to symbolize a type of disposable human garbage, that truly are without a face, an identity and "sin nombre", without name. Perhaps we could all come to understand what it is that drives these waves of humanity to risk it all for even the promise of a better future. Then we could all come to realize that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are not exclusively American values, but rather universal values to which all people aspire to.

Even amidst all the doom and gloom of the movie there are some sublime moments of beauty, humanity and yes even hope. It was quite hard at times for me to watch this movie, not because of what I saw, but because I can relate to what I saw and be reminded of a time in my life I wish I could forget, but know I can't. It will be part of me until the day I die. I want people to learn and understand instead of being so quick to judge and dismiss the plight of other fellow human beings.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF THE SITUATION WAS REVERSED?

I saw this beautifully crafted new film at Sundance and was completely entranced. The cinematography and design is astounding. The new faces and local actors give everything for the project. The writer/director did an extensive amount of research including riding on the tops of trains with immigrants crossing Mexico, and spending time with MS gang members. And indeed the film is full of all kinds of personal, empirical moments that reach up and contrast the violence and epic quality of the piece. Ultimately the film has a very classical quality that evokes an "Odyssey" kind of timelessness. Everyone should go see this in the theatres the moment it comes out. Great, great first film.

Greetings again from the darkness. Nice to see the initial low rating has climbed after more people have discovered it. It is a riveting film that weaves together two heart-wrenching, gritty stories that would otherwise seem unrelated. It is beautifully and realistically photographed and provides no-frills story telling.

Director Cary Fukonaga throws the viewer into the middle of the brutally violent gang world at the same time he depicts the frightening desperation of Hondurans making their way through an unforgiving Mexico towards an unwelcoming United States. Trust me ... you don't wish to be part of either of these worlds.

The film is at its best when these two worlds collide and Willy/Casper makes a life-changing decision to help a would-be victim. Edgar Flores plays Willy/Casper as the reluctant gang member with a conscience who is just trying to have a life outside the gang. He plays hero to Paulina Gaitan's Sayra, who is on her way to see relatives in New Jersey. Ms. Gaitan reminds of the talented Catalina Sandino Moreno from the excellent "Maria Full of Grace". Willy and Sayra are an odd couple, but seem good for each other, though their destiny seems obvious from the first moment.

Some great footage of the inner workings of an ultra violent, macho world of gangs left me wondering how anyone could escape alive. These are very scary people. I can understand some finding this difficult to watch, but I can't understand how it can be mistaken for anything other than fine film-making.

Let's call this film a documentary. Sure, these were actors following a script. But more importantly, it documents a segment of life that few readers in the developed world have any insight into.

For those who avoid graphic violence, I suggest reading the section on this site that describes specifically what it is, and shut your eyes selectively. I did; but still couldn't relax enough to have dinner afterward until I downed several shots of Scotch. I was shaken, my throat constricted, and imbued with a feeling that may be a mild dose of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

But documentaries are like that. And when I read that the writer-director, Cary Joji Fukunaga, had actually lived with his subjects, and risked his life voluntarily, as they do out of routine necessity, I consider the least I can do is vicariously experience this reality. It is a reality that I see every day in the frightened eyes of those stunted young men congregating around "Home Depot" looking for a day's wages.

It reflects a life so mean, so violent, that the lawless Tijuana is a Nirvana compared to their home slums of Honduras and Guatemala. So first they come to Mexico, then ride the trains to the ultimate goal, America. In doing so they run a gauntlet of dangers that could only be conveyed in a dramatization such as this.

Empathy, compassion to all in our society, is a luxury for those born into a world where such emotion is the norm. Even in America's imperfect society, the rule of law predominates and the random violence is still newsworthy. The people in this film, especially the gang members had no such choice. These gangs provide a circle of affection and caring, but it is defined by the contrast between those who are their "homies" and the outsiders, the other gangs, for whom cruelty has no limits.

On a day trip last week to Baja California, we were stopped at a check point configured exactly like the one in the film. A single soldier in bullet proof vest surrounded by sand bags with a 50 caliber machine gun pointed at our car. My friend struck up a conversation with the guard; they both smiled, and we went on our way, to stop at a bakery right before crossing the border and heading to our home in Encinitas.

Similar check points; but for those refugees in "Sin Nombres" huddled in the empty car on the truck, their lives depended on not being seen. If they had been spotted, and then run out of fear, the machine gun would have killed them in a second, by soldiers hardened by the same violence they face.

My day trip to Mexico, while covering same type of territory, could not have been more different. I had my American Express Card and an American Passport, along with a cloak of protection by the norms of an ordered society. Those depicted in the film had none of this. Their lives were determined at the moment of their birth, with choices so limited that their desperate Odyssey to reach what was my birthright was their best available option .

This is an important film. Perhaps it should be edited with the more horrible graphic acts simply alluded to, to make it more accessible to a wider audience in America. While it provides no political prescription, it conveys an accurate picture of the reality of life just below our border.

If there is to be a political plan to addressing our "illegal immigrant" problem, at the least it should be informed by the road taken by those depicted in this powerful film.

After watching El Norte (a great film, by the way), I wanted to find more films about an immigrant's journey to the U.S. Upon finding Sin Nombre, I wanted to like it. I was determined to watch it with an open mind and a serious attitude . . . and the movie turned out decent, for the most part, but something essential was missing.

Soul.

Before tagging me as "sentimental" and skipping the rest of my review, understand that a film about people's suffering needs well developed characters who truly embody the reality they represent. Sayra did not. I found her and a couple other characters to be not quite believable. Their struggles were obviously seen from an outsider's perspective who only detailed the violence, and not even the full violence. I felt alienated watching this film, a feeling I didn't get whilst watching El Norte. El Norte had its share of plot holes, but it delivered in terms of emotional impact. It made me truly care. This film showed the violence, but forgot to treat its characters as actual people.

The movie also came off as a typical thriller. Good guys, bad guys, bad guy gone good, etc. Where is the life? I wanted something that explored the emotional journey more. The cinematography and music are top notch, and the tattoos were a nice touch. However, this film did not seem genuine. It seemed very fabricated. The actors themselves were believable. It was the script that put me off.

However, I did really enjoy seeing the journey of the youngest major character of the film. It was chilling to think about.

In Sin Nombre, first-time writer-director 31-year-old Cary Joji Fukanaga has crafted a uniquely moving film experience that dramatizes with authenticity the drive among the poor in Latin America to pull up roots and seek a better life in the U.S. Transcending genres and styles, Sin Nombre, translated "without a name", is performed by mostly non-professional local actors whose weathered faces mirror the harsh realities of their life. The film is shot by cinematographer Adriano Goldman with 35mm film rather than digital-video which is today's norm and avoids stylistic clichés such as hand-held cameras and dizzier-than-thou fast cutting.

Opening in Tapachula in the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico with a saturated color palette of deep red and orange, the trajectory of this low-budget, but beautifully shot thriller follows two parallel threads that meet in the middle. It begins with the initiation of a new member into the Mara Salvatrucha gang, in this case, a twelve year old boy called Smiley (Kristyan Ferrer) who has been recruited into the gang by young Willy aka Casper (Edgar Flores). Smiley must endure a gang ritual where he is thrown to the ground and kicked and beaten thirteen times to prove his toughness. As if that is not enough, the pre-teen is then forced to shoot a prisoner from the Chavalas, a rival gang.

Breaking the rules, Willy takes Smiley with him to meet his secret girlfriend Martha Marlene (Diana Garcia) but the clandestine meeting ends when sadistic gang leader, Lil' Mago (Tenoch Huerta Mejia) finds out about it and tries to rape her with tragic consequences. In the second thread, Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), a Honduran teenager is reunited with her father and decides to join him and her uncle on a perilous journey to New Jersey to meet other family members. In a powerful scene, they join other immigrants at a train crossing and then climb to the top of the railroad car of a passing train to begin the journey. One of the many dangers they face is that of being robbed by gangs or other poor Latinos who think they must have huge sums of money.

In this case, the robbers are Casper and Smiley who have been ordered to join Lil' Mago. When the leader tries to rape Sayra, however, Casper takes action which ensures that his future and that of Sayra will be inextricably linked. To reach the U.S., Sayra and Willy, now drawn together out of mutual need and attraction, have to overcome the network of covert operatives employed by the Mara gang, the danger of the border patrols, and the ordinary Mexicans who throw rocks at them and put their journey in peril. Powerful performances by Gaitan and Flores create an electric chemistry that wraps our hearts around their struggle to find release from their troubled past.

Winner of awards for directing and cinematography at Sundance, Sin Nombre has been attacked by some critics because it is a story about the truth of poor people's lives wrapped in a conventional framework. In my view, that is precisely what gives the film its strength. It is not an easy task for any immigrant who wants to make it to America, and Sin Nombre alerts us to the dangers as well as the opportunities. It succeeds not only as education but as theater, allowing the viewer not only to understand the perils illegal immigrants face but to relate emotionally to them as human beings.

Fukanaga was not a criminal or an immigrant but knows full well that the common thread existing among all people is that of being able to dream of a new day for themselves and the people they love. He spent two years doing research among the Mara Salvatrucha gang based in Mexico and Los Angeles, and in riding on the top of freight cars with Honduran and Salvadorean immigrants headed towards the U.S. border. The result is both deeply moving in its poetry and off-putting in its violence, a film of heartbreaking sadness but also one of joy and redemption, one of the best so far of 2009.

One thing that pulled my ratings down for this film is that the plot structure contains too many clichéd elements that don't seem to fit well with everything else. However, even with that taken into account, the movie did not disappoint too much fortunately, because its focus was on the smaller puzzles that make up the lives of the communities in question, rather than the lovey-dovey/gangster glorification/unneeded sense of insecurity/'bad boy' elements that are seen too much in movies nowadays.

The director did present fruitful details resulting from extensive research of living with these subjects, whether on top of a train or in the midst of a cold inner empire of the gangsters. the REsult, A much more penetrative, underside view on the effects of poverty in a Latin community unseen in other movies, which typically lack the courage to be that direct. That is the beauty of this movie.

Directed by the young talent Cary Fukunaga, a winner of the Sundance Film Festival Directing award, the film focuses on a combination of issues in South America, from involvement of kids and teenagers in Mexican gangs to what it takes for those who decide to leave South and Central America and seek greener pastures in the U.S.

The story follows two main characters, Casper and Sayra, played by lesser-known actors Edgar Flores and Paulina Gaitan. While Casper is the member of the feared gang Mara Salvatrucha, his faith connects him with Sayra, a Honduran emigrant that travels with her father and uncle together with the other emigrants on a freight train to the U.S.

On this journey together, as Casper tries to escape his faith and Sayra to meet hers, the main characters are slowly blending together, complete each other through their diversity, while they have to face the rough side of life in today's Mexico.

As a result, the film has a gripping, disturbing, moving sour-sweet blend to it, and is exactly the type of the film where it's unpredictability, natural change of pace, and lots of eye candy in the scenery, makes you part of the story until the credits role, making you beg for more inside.

Fukunaga's film feels so real not only thanks to his time spent in Mexico and his first hand experience with both, emigrants and immigrants he met before and while shooting the film, his cast of actual members of the Mara gang, perfect editing and combination of locations and the effort he took while filming to get the best out of his actors ("apart from beating them", he joked at Vary), makes the film one of the best feature debuts I've ever seen.

Sin Nombre is a Spanish film about gangsters, the harsh life of illegal immigrants and a tragic love story. The plot is too interesting not to include it in this review, especially considering not many people have seen Sin Nombre. Teenager Sayra locates her father after many years and they (and her uncle) decide to migrate to New Jersey. They realize it's a grueling journey but one worth taking. The other part is a thrilling gangster story filled with suspense and pain. Not giving too much away, one of the gangsters kills the leader of his gang to save Sayra. The film then turns into cat-and-mouse chase filled with suspense and emotion. I did not recognize any of the actors yet they all managed to give realistic performances, even the young gangster Smiley. The cinematography is quiet outstanding. The director captures the highs and lows of Mexico perfectly. After the first ten minutes, there is never a dull moment. This film is full of excitement but is also highly emotional at times. I also found it to be a useful character study of the complicated life of a gangster. It's depressing to see that so few people have seen one of the best movies of 2009. Sin Nombre is a film that will stay with you long after the credits start rolling.

Well received at The Jamaica World Cinema Showcase. A Best Of JWCS Nominee for "Best Full length Picture". The Film takes a look at the issue of Illegal immigration and ghetto survival.

Audience members, after watching the film were asked to vote on the film and ended up with a four star rating.

"Immersive".... Tanya Batson Savage, Ministry Of Youth Culture and sports.

"beautifully shot film" Tom Finnigan, Finnigans Winery,

"A sad truthful take on Illegal immigration, beautiful" Lloyd Laing, JWCS

A truly excellent film, and an important one for our time. It has a brutal, awakening reality to it, but only to show the innocence and courage the characters portray. It is a very pure, and new story of survival. Brilliantly shot, with a ver rich, and warm feel, at the same time is brings you to the frightening underworld of the vicious gang organizations in Central America. Academy Award nominated film producers Diego Luna and Gael Bernal obviously saw a diamond with this film and out came a modern day masterpiece. Cant believe i missed it in theaters. For a first film by Cary Fukunaga, it looks as if it's his 10th, showing no flaws, and with a cast of actors that do their characters amazing justice, Sin Nombre is a MUST SEE!

This is obviously a well done film, but the end result is a depiction of a ultra-violent macho culture of gangs in Central America. I felt no real sympathy with hardly any of the characters, except, maybe, the one violent gangster that slits the throat of another violent gangster just before he is about to rape a girl trying to (illegally) immigrate to the USA. There's violence in the film GANDHI too, but at least there's a culture of nonviolent vegetarians to contrast it to. Sin Nombre has no real sufficient culture to contrast with, therefore the violence just seems make you hate almost everyone in the film, and leaves you feeling dispirited.

This movie rocked. I would definitely recommend seeing it, especially on the big screen: the cinematography is incredible. The film manages to teach you something about the world, expose you to an underworld you (well, at least I) had no idea existed, bring up some important social issues, all while keeping you on the edge of your seat. Some highlights included stunts on trains, some crazy home-made guns, and amazing tattoos. The acting was also very good -- especially considering several of the cast had no real acting experience. The audience I saw it with loved it -- it got some great gasps and even some big laughs. And all by a first-time director. Well done.

I previously said the two best movies of 2009 thus far are "Sunshine Cleaning" and "State of Play". But this newest entry, "Sin Nombre", makes me move this one into the top spot, easily. It is a meaningful contemporary statement made by a writer/director newcomer with guts.

The story(ies) begin in Honduras, a bit later on in Mexico. We first meet Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), who is to accompany her father from Honduras to America – their sights are set on New Jersey. Sayra has not seen her father in a long time, so theirs is an uneasy alliance. He shows her a crudely drawn map, and he traces their route; theirs is a long journey.

We next meet Casper (aka Willy – played by Edgar Flores), a member of a Mexican gang from whom he is hiding his girlfriend; he lies to the gang leader about his whereabouts, but this fearsome leader has his suspicions. We also meet Smiley (Kristian Ferrer) who has just been initiated into the gang. Both Casper and Smiley are put to an additional test to prove their loyalty. They are now thoroughly enmeshed in a world of violence and considerable darkness. This is an edgy world, one in which the overwhelming sensation is constant threat.

Eventually the two separate threads become entwined – both Casper and Smiley have headed north on a train headed north through Mexico, and Sayra and her father have climbed aboard the same train. How all these characters meet and how their itineraries merge is the heart of the narrative.

The shots of train yards and of the illegal train passengers enroute – sitting on top of cars mostly - are very engaging and have a authentic look. The cinematography in the movie is terrific. There are great shots of border crossings and always the trains. According to director Cary Fukunaga the train scenes were difficult to shoot (http://www.popmatters.com):

"We had to maximize those few days we could actually shoot on a train to make it all real," Fukunaga says. "We ended up building a prop train on flatbed trailers, pulling them on country roads around Mexico. You use extras on the set to block the horizon line. If they're in the way, you can't see how far the train goes off into the distance. Definitely something they don't teach you in film school."

All really good movies have a surprise, and there is one here that made me lean forward as if I could see a little better; it was a case of - Did I just see what I think I saw? And that reminds me that this was the first picture in a long time where people walked out fairly early on. That always makes me wonder what a movie about gangsters would have attracted them in the first place.

I am reminded of "City of God" and "Amores Perros", two films that also portray the darker sides of Central America. For anyone needing a fix of smart storytelling with social commentary woven throughout should seek this one out. This is my favorite kind of movie, one where the director leads you through a shadowy other-world full of realistic characters and situations.

Four stars.

Sin Nombre isn't a new concept, it's been done numerous times. Nonetheless it gives you an inside view of how it's like to be on the run, escaping to a better world.

The casting for this movie is really good. Youngsters (and even one kid) acting convincingly, like it could have been a documentary about troubles they encounter.

I would highly recommend this movie to everyone, but especially to youngsters who glamorize the 'gang' thing. You will probably think twice after seeing (and understanding) this movie.

Don't hesitate. Go and watch this movie. It won't be your favorite movie, but it will give you something to think about.

In 'Sin Nombre' ("Nameless"), Cary Joji Fukanaga's first film, which he both wrote and directed, a doomed, romantic relationship develops between a boy who has broken away from an evil Mexican gang in Chiapas and a pretty girl ("A regular little Selma Hayek," someone calls her) from Honduras. Refusing to go on robbing the migrants hitching a ride atop a freight train, Willy, known in his gang as El Casper (Edgar Flores) saves Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) and attacks another gang member. His pubescent sidekick Smiley (Kristian Ferrer) flees. There are a lot of scenes at the beginning to establish the bestial behavior of Casper and Willy's gangster crew, the Confetti clica of the LA-origin, now international hoodlum organization known as Mara Salvatrucha.

It's a sign of the economic level of Confetti that a major source of livelihood is for them to prey upon poor migrants from Honduras passing through Chiapas on freight trains. Manohla Dargis believes Sin Nobre is saved "from tipping into full-blown exploitation like 'City of God'" by Fukunaga's "sincerity," but she acknowledges that this new film (whose scrawny, heavily tattooed Mexican gangsters simply haven't the panache of Meirelles and Lund's Rio street youths) goes for maximum drama and final uplift and follows narrative arcs not unlike those of 1930 Hollywood studio films about kid hoods. Except there's a big difference from the Thirties in that these are largely inexperienced actors speaking their native Spanish in gritty realistic locations handsomely filmed in 35 mm. by cinematographer Adriano Goldman.

Sayra is with several male relatives, and their story is developed, somewhat more briefly and much less vividly, along with the events in the lives of Casper and Smiley that lead up to their all meeting on the top of the train. Little Smiley is a new gang recruit, and, in scenes just as exploitive and gruesome as anything in 'City of God' if not more so, he is shown being beaten and kicked and then forced to shoot an enemy gang member whose guts are then fed to the dogs. After that initiation, he's somehow still suspected of insufficient loyalty. Meanwhile Casper gets into huge trouble for keeping a secret girlfriend. The gang owns him body and soul so this is considered inexcusable, and ends tragically for him and the girl after the particularly mean and ugly Confetti leader Lil' Mago (Tenoch Huerta Mejia) tries to rape her and she resists. This leads Casper to turn against the gang when he sees another gang member going after Syra atop the train. Then, there's nothing he can do but stay on the trip north, dodging La Migra and helping the Hondurans do so.

Edgar Flores' perpetual tired, sad look and the more experienced Gaitan's resilient prettiness make them a cute tragic couple, though the story has to resort to a fortuneteller's prediction that she'd be saved on the journey by the Devil to explain how she gloms onto the doomed gang youth (the Salvatrucha features Satanic symbols0, even with increasing evidence that in fact that they're out to get him and he is a marked man for turning against them. However, the simple tragic outline of this doomed romance is somewhat at odds with the vérité aspects of much that has gone before.

Instead of dealing with the whole journey into LA or elsewhere like Gregory Nava's excellent 1983 El Norte, and showing what happens when the immigrants try to make a living in the US, 'Sin Nombre' gets rather hung up on its gang portrait, though still presenting only vignettes of that, and the bonding of Casper (now back to "Willy") and Sayra takes up so much time that the movie ends rather abruptly once someone makes it into the Estados Unidos. Still, like Joshua Marston of the 2004 'Maria Full of Grace' (which focused on another pretty Latin girl)-- and both directors are California-born college boys -- Fukanaga has made a vivid film about the dangerous inequities of the US and the Hispanic South and has gained a lot of justified attention for it. Both partake of both good and bad aspects of Sundance. Fukanaga also made the harrowing short film, 'Victoria para chino,' about the 80 Mexican illegals sent north in a sealed freight truck through very hot weather who arrived in Texas dead. 'Sin Nombre' was co-produced by the ubiquitous Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal.

Instead of sensationalism for its own sake, director Fukunaga relates a gripping story straight, a clear narrative outlining the mental and physical journey taken by a young man recruited into a violent Latino gang and used by them to gather protection money to beef up the gang coffers; the young man makes choices that create difficulties his path one of both fear and self-awakening, and a parallel story of immigrants attempting to crash the U.S. border lines him up with a young woman of integrity. As noted by so many critics and reviewers, this is an often violent film, but how else to picture what we know has often made many border towns between the United States and Mexico unlivable? This is an important picture, a sincere and moving effort which captures a world most of us only read about

Engaging, gritty drama.

In Honduras, a man, his son and daughter set out to get into the United States and ultimately New Jersey, where his wife and remainder of his family are. Their journey will take them through Guatemala and Mexico.

Meanwhile, in Southern Mexico, a young man is struggling to reconcile his membership of a gang and his personal life. Soon, circumstances will force his and the three Hondurans' paths to converge, for better or worse...

A good story, well told. A story of overcoming hardship, doing the right thing, loyalty and what some people go through in order to migrate to another country.

Not perfect - there was an inevitability and predictability about the plot and it felt contrived at times.

Good performances all round.

I liked this movie. Like never before I got the perspective of immigrants coming over to the US from Latin America. It gave me a better understanding of the extent of the gang culture. The natural scenery was beautiful. At the same time they were not shy about showing you human depravity. Not a film for the week hearted. I am shocked that IMDb rates it so low as of today. I think this is one of the best films of the decade. It would be a great tool to use the next time immigration becomes a big subject. The actors felt like real people that you can identify with. For someone that knows a little Spanish it is great practice.

It's a pretty straightforward movie. Just tells the story, don't expect any artsy stuff. It also had several cliches, you could predict what would happen at the end, so don't expect any plot twists. But other than that, it was a pretty solid movie, summarized the gang life well.

In the debut film from Cary Fukunaga, we see Mexico as a place that is not completely hopeless but, really, the people who want to get out and migrate to America have good reason. The film, nor the filmmaker, doesn't really pass judgment on the situation currently happening with immigration of Mexicans to America. It just tells its story as is, that people do go by train (well, some of them) across Mexico, and under different circumstances. Some need the work, some are even coming from Guatemala. Others are actually escaping something. And here Fukunaga takes inspiration from two sources (at least it's my impression he does): El Norte, the 1980's drama about immigrants crossing Mexico to LA, and Amores Perros, in part about the grungy and hard-violence life of gang members.

Both stories are told with fascination, though if one is more compelling I might go with the story about the gangster who is in a group that is completely ruthless, inked and tattooed in specific markings (sometimes, as with the gang leader, all over their face), and have a really strict code in order to let in new people, like a young kid who wants in just because he has no place else to go. We see how this character eventually crosses paths with a young Guatemalan woman who plans to somehow get to New Jersey to see her family again. She goes with a couple of family members by a free transport- on top of a train going north along with a hundred others on top of the boxcar. The gang member comes across her, and joins her, in an unlikely set-up, but one that spells doom for him after he kills a fellow member (the leader actually).

Fukunaga features a nice balance between the very rough streets of Mexico with the inviting views of the mountains and plains and other visual sights to take in. He has a documentary eye for the locations without pushing it: we're just there with these people, and it looks and sounds and feels as ugly but also as beautiful as it can get. While towards the end the drama about whether or not this guy will get captured gains momentum perhaps predictably (you'll see what I mean when you see it, it's a tragic but all-too-necessary end), there are many memorable moments. I loved the scene where the train stops at the town, and all of a sudden the gang member along for the train-ride is spotted by his fellow ex-members looking to gun him down. But before they can get to him they get into a street war with a rival gang. It's unforced irony and it's wonderfully shot and exciting and unpredictable. If only for a few moments, Sin Nombre is alive in ways few films were in 2009.