I would imagine it is difficult, as a first-time director coming off a long shoot, to go into the editing process and let hours of hard work end up on the virtual cutting room floor. I might also entertain that you would be so enthralled with one particular action sequence that you might consider using it twice. Let it go, my dear director. Let it go.

While Amores Perros (2000), the first feature from director Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 Grams, Babel), is an excellent film for a first-time director, it also suffers from many novice mistakes. The film lost to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for best foreign film at the 2000 Academy Awards and could have been a much tighter and engaging film. Its overlapping stories are more compelling than the single story driving Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, while also showing more realistic portrayals of pain and suffering.

While the gruesome, bloody dog-fighting scenes turn many away, it’s made clear that the budget line item for doggie craft service is probably more than most of us make annually. What disturbed me was the film breaking my number one pet peeve: taking a key sequence from the middle of the film and using it as the opening. This practice was prolific around the year 2000, as also seen in American Beauty (1999) and Pollock (2000).

I can’t think of any good reasons to open a film with a critical sequence from the middle. It allows the discerning viewer too much information with which they can extrapolate what will happen in scenes later in the film. Maybe the filmmakers loved that scene so much they wanted to show it twice. Or they felt the opening of their film needed some oomph and that was all they had. The Antonioni in me would have preferred two minutes of a still camera showing the dog Cofi pacing around before escaping out the door at the 4:47 mark above. That’s a great opening.

Amores Perros is not presented out of sequence, other than the opening scene. The film’s three distinct stories are in perfect linear sequence, overlapping each other around the individuals in or near the car crash. The dog Cofi carries over through the first and third stories, while the second story seems somewhat tacked on and is only necessary for the other party involved in the crash.

In the first story, titled “Octavio and Susana,” the focus is on Octavio, who attempts to woo Susana away from her asshole husband, Ramiro, who also happens to be Octavio’s brother. They all live with the brothers’ mother and the dog Cofi, who belongs to the asshole but who is fed by Octavio. The tension between the characters in their opening scene is palpable and sets a great tone, however tainted by the actual opening.

The second story, “Daniel and Valeria,” switches to upper class problems, such as having a supermodel mistress and an apartment with a hole in the floor. This story would make an interesting short film on its own but felt out of place overall. They managed to work a dog into the story but only as an afterthought, a decoration. While Valeria adds innocence to the crash (as I’ll discuss later), I wanted more from her in relation to the people who ruined her career.

The third story, “El Chivo and Maru,” grabbed my interest the most. Catching glimpses of what appears to be a garbage-browsing bum, the viewer learns that the character of El Chivo was a former revolutionary who left his wife and daughter and is now a hit man. One of my favorite scenes is when El Chivo is reading the paper the day after he assassinates an important person and draws on the newspaper photo of that person. He then turns the page and notices an ad for a funeral and almost breaks down crying. (It was the funeral of his mother-in-law, where he catches a glimpse of his grown daughter.) Emilio Echevarría is definitely the star of this film. When the film returned to the remnants of the first story during the El Chivo segment, I wasn’t interested in Octavio nor Susana anymore. El Chivo had captured my full attention.

The Crash that Binds

It was during the second story of Daniel and Valeria where the third instance of the car crash happens and it was the most dramatic instance. I can only believe it would have been heightened even more had I not already seen it twice. The third viewing of the crash is more dramatic because the supermodel is innocently on her way to pick up some champagne and is not being chased by gun-wielding hoodlums in a large truck with flames on it. She, as well as the viewer, doesn’t expect it. If I were to allow an instance of the crash to be shown at the beginning of the film, this one would have been a better choice. The angle at which it was filmed gave it greater authority as well.

The car crash in shown one more time during the El Chivo story and allows the viewer to see how he rescues the dog Cofi, who was dying of a bullet wound on the back seat of Octavio’s car. Although El Chivo is oblivious to Cofi’s winning dog-fighting ways, the viewer is once again set up with a situation in which they already know the outcome. El Chivo travels with a posse of mutts. Once Cofi is back on his feet, El Chivo leaves him alone with his mutt posse. When El Chivo returns home, Cofi is obviously the last dog standing. El Chivo is pissed and wants to shoot Cofi in the head but refrains. The assassin can’t kill the assassin. They must learn to live together.

Enough with the cliche transition shots (and cut down the running time)
These are some shots and scenes that could have been cut to tighten up the film, since it does suffer from an unnecessarily long running time.

A wide angle tilt from high to low in between two buildings. This transition shot is followed by a scene that also should have been cut. Again, it is a scene that was telegraphed earlier in the film when Susana’s mother-in-law can’t sit Susana’s child and tells her that she should get her own mother to do it. The scene that follows this transition is merely Susana picking up her crying baby and leaving while the drunk mother drinks. It adds nothing to the story, since her mother is not seen again, nor does it develop Susana’s backstory any further than the viewer can already imagine.

The second example is a transition shot of El Chivo walking down the street with his dogs. They are coming over a hill as some atmospheric music plays (almost seems like another short music video). The only thing missing to make it the most overused cliche transition shot is slow-motion and a fog machine.

The third example is from the end of the film when El Chivo, wearing his old eyeglasses, walks away from the camera across a scorched field after dropping off a stolen car at a auto salvage yard. I could hear the song “I Can See Clearly Now” playing, in my head. It was all too literal. An abrupt ending would have been better and, again, would have saved a bit of time. For my critics cut, I’d hack about a minute off the end, right where the auto salvage guy asks El Chivo the name of his dog and he just looks at the dog as it barks. It would tie in nicely with my alternate opening.

The film suffers most by trying to set everything up too neatly. Scenes where exposition gives the viewer information about action coming later are abundant. Two prime examples include, in the first story of Octavio and Susana, Susana’s husband Ramiro, who has a hobby of robbing drug stores, telling his co-robber that he is going to rob a bank soon, which will be his last robbery. I won’t ask you to guess how Ramiro dies. The other example comes from El Chivo when he explains that he has bad vision while discussing the details of a contract killing. He had no trouble reading the newspaper and spent a lot of time watching people from a distance, so I’m not sure if he was near- or far-sighted. But it is a great set up for the ending where he is finally wearing his glasses and walking off into the distance. Is that literal enough for you?

Overall, the film suffers from trying to overload the viewer with expectations, to shock too simply, to overcompensate with unnecessary details. One of the most egregious examples of this is when Octavio runs into his brother’s room and grabs an empty case, flinging it against the wall after his mother tells him that his brother left with wife and child. The set up for this had been shown over and over: Octavio bringing home money from the dog fights and putting it in the case so that he and Susana could go away together. Once the mother tells Octavio the brother and wife left, let the camera dwell on Octavio thinking about his next move rather than the obvious cursing and flinging an empty case shown here. Please, let it go.

This review is part of The Year 2000: Counting Down the Zeroes, hosted by Film for the Soul.