TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID – Review

This film’s premise may promise many flights of fantasy and endearing whimsical humor, but what it delivers is something else entirely. A group of modern (well, the last decade) street kids must work together in a re-imagining of classic fairy tales. Sounds a bit like last year’s THE KID WHO WOULD BE KING, doesn’t it? Well, there are really few similarities, since this setting is a Mexican city turned war zone, with vicious drug runners blasting away at anyone, kids especially, that gets in their way. Can their belief in the power of those iconic stories and characters save these urchins, or will their sense of wonder lead them to their doom? Maybe they can learn to become fearless since TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID.

We meet the film’s two main characters in the pre-title scenes. Middle school student Estrella (Paola Lara) is excited by the class assignment. Using classic characters and setting (princes, castle, witches, and tigers, of course), they are to create a new “fairy tale”. Cut to the dark, dangerous streets as a boy around the same age, El Shine (Juan Ramon Lopez), observes a “thug” named Caco (Ianis Guerrero) drunkenly stumble into an alley to relieve himself. While he’s “occupied”, Shine lifts his gold-trimmed pistol and his dragon-decorated cell phone. Meanwhile, Estrella’s concentration is interrupted by gunfire just outside the classroom. The students dive from their desks onto the floor. Her teacher crawls to Estrella, giving her three pieces of chalk as she whispers “Here’s your three wishes”. Later that day Estrella walks back to her home from the now “closed indefinitely” grade school. But the apartment she shares with her Mama is empty. As the hours drag on, Estrella observes a group of boys (led by Shine) who have their own make-shift home on the roof of a nearby deserted building. The next day she catches Shine robbing her place, and follows him back to his “camp”. Shine wants nothing to do with her, but Estrella soon becomes a surrogate mother (or big sister) to the other three boys. But as they begin to bond, Caco arrives looking for his stolen items. Seems that the phone is far more valuable to him than the gun. So valuable that the children’s’ lives are in deadly danger. Can Estrella’s faith in fairy tale “magic” save them from the violence that has made their neighborhood a “ghost town”?

Director/writer Issa Lopez has crafted a very modern, hard-edged take on the old “bedtime stories”, deftly mixing elements of “magical realism” with a tough, gritty urban gangster crime thriller. One big reason this “mash-up” works is the natural performances by Ramon Lopez as Shine and Paola Lara as Estrella. They seem like real kids since they’re gifted amateurs rather than seasoned pros. Those rough edges really work, particularly for Shine who must always project strength above all else until he finally reveals his vulnerable side to Estrella. The scars on the side of his face are nothing compared to the ones around his young, battered heart. Lara may have the more complex character arc as Estrella who must adjust to street life after the sanctuary of home and school is shattered. Lopez makes this modern city feel like a decimated post-apocalyptic “dead zone” like the settings for I AM LEGEND and any number of Zombie TV shows and flicks. Life is cheap here, with no “safe space’ for women and children, with the drug-running criminals the true “monsters” of this fable, and the “law’ is no help at all. This makes the fantastical elements and effects more powerful. A stream of blood careens across floors and walls in search of the next fatality. Objects spring to life around Estrella: a bracelet becomes a flock of blackbirds, a snake and dragon slither away from a gun and a cellphone, and a beloved stuffed toy becomes a guide. And where does the toy send her? In a sequence reminiscent of the 50s EC horror comic books, the dead demand revenge, as bodies wrapped in clear plastic plead for justice. Really heart-breaking, but still horrific, much like the Del Toro’s masterwork PAN’S LABYRINTH, TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID casts a most memorable spell. But this is a fairy tale is not for the “wee ones”.

3 Out of 4

TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID opens everywhere and screens exclusively in the St. Louis area at Marcus’ St. Charles Stadium 18 Cinema