Must seeing for anyone wanting to understand Mexican politics. This was recommended by a business associate in Mexico, and, boy, am I glad I watched it.
Juan Vargas, the hero of "La Ley de Herodes" learns quickly his role as mayor of the forgotten town where the ruling PRI party has chosen him to preside. The town and its people stand as a Mexican metaphor for what's wrong in the country, as a whole.
Herod's Law translates into "La Ley de Herodes" which is a proverb people say frequently in politics, meaning that you're forced to do something you don't want to, but you have to do it anyways for your own good. I came in expecting something simple and boring, but I was in for a fun Mexican movie about cynicism and politics.
A perfect and abundantly Mexican version of Lord Acton's dictum, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." In 1949 a local official of the ruling PRI (Pedro Armendariz as López) chooses a humble janitor (Damián Alcázar, as Juan Vargas) to be presidente municipal ("mayor") of a dusty, dirty little village in northern México.
This film has a lot of good things: good photography; excellent actors; a good recreation of Mexico in that times (so I've heard); the low-saturated colors are also a pretty detail... Anyway, I think that this topic of corruption could lead to a much better film.
This film, the first of a trilogy by Luis Estrada (which continued with UN MUNDO MARAVILLOSO in 2006 and would culminate in EL INFERNO in 2010), although historically located in Mexico in 1949 in a remote corner of the Mexican province was the first in which I saw a lot of things called by their actual name and that have not lost their validity to date: The official party and its eternal opponent (which at this point already had its turn in the presidency of mexican republic) and the sadly very common bad habits of both. I never watched this before in a commercial movie and I remember my eyes popped out when first saw it.
This is truly a great amazing movie, unknown by many because since Hollywood is an industry, check this out, art is now an industry, well, however, this movie is unknown by so many because it isn't in English and is not a Hollywood production, that's why. but can't you peoplesee the U.
If you want to understand La Ley De Herodes you need to be aware of what the PRI was really on Mexico. First of all it began as a Party that unified the state after our famous and violent revolution the PRI unified Mexico, it started as a good cause but with time it degraded and became what we could see in the movie.
Within the film, La Ley De Herodes we can observe the intention of the director to address the several issues involving the Mexican government. While watching the film, what appears to be another simple political satire, rapidly becomes a provocative denunciation of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI).