Mullet With A Heart: A Review

Earlier this week, I went to see Biutiful staring Javier Bardem and directed by Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu. Inarritu is know for the lovely rom-com 21 Grams, and that silly farce Babel. So I knew I was in store for a playful romp through Barcelona.

Obviously, this was going to be some heavy shit- did you watch the trailer?! Blew your face off right? Well imagine that for 2 & 1/2 hours. Rich imagery, interweaving story lines (A Inarritu favorite) and deep pain and emotion flowing through each of the characters. Unlike his other works, this story primarily focus on Javier Bardem's character who's name begins with an X or some weird shit like that. He's a struggling family man with a bat shit crazy wife, a sleazy brother, and two adorable kids. Props on the kid actors... 1. They picked a girl who looks straight up like the bat shit crazy mom and 2. Those kids know how to make some frickn' melancholy faces like you wouldn't believe. Bardem is a little like a hustler, he's involved in this and that, and because of him the underworld is basically able to function. He spends a good part of the movie walking here and walking there while letting his Spanish Mullet flop in the wind.

Ahem* A word about Javier Bardem...

Best. Actor. Ever.

The fact that he can go from this:



To this:



Is pretty amazing. Usually if you play a weirdo well in a movie, you're stuck playing weirdos the rest of your career. Not this fool. Why? Because he can act his pants off. Also he's not an American based actor, and we tend to pigeon hole our thespians... except for James Franco... but he's a whole 'nother barrel of freak (tweeting a picture of your pee? Really dude?!). Bardem in this movie is magnificent. You can almost taste the pain he's going though physically, mentally, and spiritually. His body bent over from everything that is weighing on him. If he doesn't win an Oscar I--- wont be surprised, because award shows are basically the equivalent of your "senior best" page in high school... you and I both know that the girl voted "prettiest" was not... her ass was just hella popular, but if he does win- I'll be happy.

The pace of the film is slow and eerie with a touch, just a touch of the super natural. Being the radical feminist that I am, I'm not too happy with the minority representation of the film- but then again no one is really shown in that favorable of a light- it's one of Inarritu specialties, he's shows that everyone has duality making each of us biutiful.