El Patrullero
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EL PATRULLERO (1991) is the first Mexican feature by the British director Alex Cox. Using some of the cast of his film WALKER (1988) and the same producer, Lorenzo O'Brien, it's the story of a young man (Roberto Sosa) starting his career as a Highway Patrolman in the rural north.
The cop, Pedro Rojas, tries to play it straight, unlike his friend Anibal Guerrero (Bruno Bichir) who quickly starts taking bribes and peddling contraband. When Anibal is killed by drug dealers, Pedro falls into his own dark world of corruption, betrays his wife Griselda (Zaide Silvia Guttierez) with a prostitute, Maribel (Vanessa Bauche), and, inevitably, leaves the force. The film ends with Pedro, jobless, with a broken-down truck, trying to maintain two families.
The best aspects of the film are the camerawork by Miguel Garzon (like the work of Cox's friend, director Arturo Ripstein, the film is shot entirely in single, moving masters, some of them almost ten minutes long); the script, by producer O'Brien, the cast (casting was by Claudia Becker and the American actor Miguel Sandoval), and the production design of Cecilia Montiel - the first solo job of the woman who later designed SIN COMPASSION, THE WINNER, CRAZY IN ALABAMA, and THE MARK OF ZORRO.