Highway Patrolman DVD

Diminutive Highway Patrolman, Pedro Rojas (Roberto Soza) is small in stature but high on morals. While his Mexican traffic cop compadres are taking bribes left, right and centre he prefers the straight-and-narrow route to law and order. But life on the highway is not as clear-cut as Pedro would like to believe and he starts to stray off course. After stopping Griselda Marcos (Zaide Silvia Gutierrez) for a minor infraction, he accepts her offer of breakfast at the family home and is before he knows it is betrothed with a child on the way. After taking a kickback from... a livestock carrier without the correct health and safety permits, Pedro drinks his guilt away in a border bar and ends up in the arms of Maribel (Vanessa Bauche), a beautiful prostitute strung-out on heroin. In the act of arresting two drunk drivers on a deserted road, Pedro is shot in the leg and left with a permanent limp. Soon after, when his fellow cop and close friend Anibal Morales (Bruno Bichir) is blasted to death by heavily armed drug traffickers, Pedro decides to walk tall and take the cartel on himself. Based on the experiences of a real highway patrolman and shot in a string of northern Mexican border towns, Alex Cox's Spanish-language road movie is flawlessly directed. Cinematographer Manuel Garzon's roaming camera floats like a mirage through the desert landscape, tracking the every move of Soza's scrawny but street tough cop. On the DVD: An audio commentary by Alex Cox and his collaborator on the film, writer/producer Lorenzo O'Brien, details the precarious ins and outs of shooting on location in Mexico and the series of real life dramas that trailed their wake. The feature appears in widescreen. --Chris Campion [show more]

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