By Alejandro Dominguez
”Everything in this movie is real. Luck is real. And there are men with luck.” These are the first words uttered to us by the film’s young protagonist, Huck (played by Matilde Hernandez), a little girl who lives with her drug addict father Rogelio (Rogelio Sosa). The two live in rundown camper in a not so distant, yet unspecified, future Mexico. A future where women are disappearing, and drug cartels have taken control of the country. Buy Me A Gun tours a dystopian setting like that of “Children of Men” just substituting the police for narcos and decaying urban areas for desolate desert landscapes. This bleak tone is offset by Huck’s innocently pure commentary throughout the film, offering us a glimpse of a child’s inner workings as she traverses the brutal environment she finds herself in.
With the number of women rapidly decreasing, Rogelio is faced with the task of keeping Huck safe not only from the dangers of the barren wasteland they live in but, more specifically, from the thugs who’ve employed him as the groundskeeper of their baseball field. It’s evident from the start that if the cartel members were to find out Rogelio has been keeping a girl right under their noses, both Huck’s and his luck would surely run out. This is essentially the central conflict of the film. How do you keep a child safe in a world of violence?
Rogelio is forced to take some extreme precautionary measures. To conceal her gender, he forces Huck to wear a mask and a baseball helmet. He also has her chained up to her ankles. I personally felt uneasy and lament at the sight of seeing a child being forced to live in such a manner. Once she provides her commentary implying it’s justified because as Huck puts it “they steal everything around here”, as an audience member, hearing her brush this off like it’s no big deal turned that feeling of uneasiness into compassion. I had to understand that she’s been brought up in this world and, unlike me, doesn’t know any different. This is her life and she’s in a way embraced it. Although it has hardened her heart, it hasn’t taken away her mind’s pureness. This is also evident when she’s with her friends, Rafa, Tom, and Angel. Three boys who’ve escaped the narcos camp and now roam the wild waiting for their time to strike back at the narcos. Their idea of play time is making a catapult and suits to camouflage in. They have taught themselves to sleep with daggers in their hands. This is where I feel the director and the film succeeds; they show how the psyche of this group of children and the way they carry themselves is a product of the world they find themselves in, but that guileless lens they see the world through hasn’t vanished, it’s just been altered.
The acting performances throughout the film were powerful, grownups and children alike. One of the lost boys, Angel (Angel Leonel Corral), had his arm chopped off by the head of the cartel for stealing. There’s a scene when he’s saying to the children that he needs to get his arm back. When asked why by Tom (Wallace Pereyda), he responds with “you wouldn’t understand… sometimes I feel my hand is open; other times I feel it closed.” The silence that engulfs the room after those lines was moving. Everyone in attendance seemed to feel this boy’s sense of anguish. Rogelio had a moment in the film when he encounters a near-death experience. The tears he wept as he begged for his life embodied the character’s agony making it convincing that this man marginally escaped his doom. Once he finds Huck, their beautiful reunion is cut short by his way of “celebrating”; drugging himself leaving Huck in an uncomfortable position, looking on as her father dives into his vices.
The film is shot beautifully, through the eyes of Nicolas Wong and the direction of Julio Hernandez Cordon. There are references to Tom Sawyers Huckleberry Finn with the naming of the lead character as well as a raft the young Huck travels by towards the end of the film. The cinematography helped give the story a very gritty and edgy feel while also emphasizing the intimate scenes, where the violence of this dystopia takes a back seat to allow for the characters to open up and show their true selves. An interesting scene that stood out is right after a shootout happens and Huck is forced to escape while witnessing the aftermath of the massacre. As she runs through a crowd of dead bodies, followed through an aerial shot, the bodies that lay on the ground with pools of blood surrounding them aren’t actual people but instead cutouts. This gave the scene an interesting aesthetic and left me wondering if this was done with the idea that this is how Huck perceived them in her mind to shield herself from the horrible sights she was forced to gaze upon while crossing the plane. Maybe it was just budgetary reasons, but regardless of which, it worked out great.
Overall, Buy Me A Gun was a success in my mind. Watching the extents Rogelio would go to keep his daughter safe was extremely touching and emotional. It showed how a parent’s will to survive, or “luck” in this case, will test every inch of their being. All the while exploring the dynamic of children being shaped by living in a world otherwise not fit for them. With a runtime of 84 minutes, it didn’t necessarily feel rushed, but the ending was a bit abrupt for me. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, seeing that when the credits began rolling as Huck was commenting on her plans, I stayed seated hoping I’d see her spring back into action. I found myself attached to this little girl and her friends and wanted them to take me with them on the adventures that were yet to come.
MIAMI FILM FESTIVAL EXPERIENCE 