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Burnt Money

Burnt Money

List Price: $29.99
Your Price: $26.99
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Lovely story, full of action & love
Review: Charming movie, a beautiful love story of two youngs gansters, that make their life toguether, scenes very well done, tension and passion all blended in a magnificent movie full of action and good acting. Ernesto and Leonardo are two magnificents actors, the movie in general is just wonderful... Good credits to the Photo, the Director, the music... You shouldn't miss it...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Way Cool
Review: Forget the art/film blahblahblah. This is a realy cool film, with gorgeous guys and love and the the postmod elegiac hardness of it all. The color alone does.
If you don't love this movie, stop watching them.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: NENE AND ANGEL.......LOVED !
Review: I caught the review of this film in a local street rag. And I am really glad I did. This is one of the best homosexual theme movies out on film, and the two main guys have done a jam-up job of acting.

There is no sex scene's between the two men, but there is a sense of very much love for each other and their kisses are real and not strained. Kudos for these two great actors. The picture has won many awards! Leonardo Sbaraglia, (Nene) , Wild Tango,
Wild Horses, and Eduardo Noreiga (ll) ( Angel) , The Devil's Backbone, Abre Los ojos, Thesis. Are known as 'the twins' , but they are not brothers, they are lover's and they are for hire robbers. The way they look at each other and the way they care for each other is very moving.

The story is about a heist that goes wrong in Buenos Aires and policemen are shot and the newspapers know who did the job. The gang has to skip to Uruguay in hopes they can stay there until the heat is off of them. But things do not go their way, and they have to move again....

I cannot say enough about the two main characters, they were excellent in their portrayal of The Twins, always together and always looking out for each other.
Also, Pablo Echarre as the driver did an excellent job. But, the tone of the movie is in the court of Nene and Angel. And their love for each other. One of the best male to male flicks to come out since Urbania. To bad Hollywood cannot turn them out!!

Burnt Money ,(Plata Quemada) will not be for all... but if you want to see some great acting and a caring no bars held male relationship, then you must run to see it. Out on DVD Oct 1, 2002 . This is the theatrical version not the dvd! I give this a 5/5 !

ciao yaaah69

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Wild film: A gay themed Resevoir Dogs!
Review: I caught this film on the Sundance Channel. I didn't know what the heck I was watching at first. Burnt Money is the story of two men - lovers - who are robbers for hire. They are part of a team of robbers. The team robs a bank and in the process kill a policeman. Their identies are known and they must leave the country to get to safety.

Told from the perspective of the robbers, this movie is no more gay than Resevoir Dogs was straight. The sexuality of the robbers is merely a character aspect of the men. So to delve more deeply into their gayness would be insulting and trivialize this film. The filmmakers do not treat their homosexuality with more importance in this film than other filmmakers do lead character's heterosexuality.

We know from the beginning that this film can only have one outcome - and that is a tragic one. These are not nice people as a whole. Certainly, they have wonderful traits, but so do the most evil of men. It is to the filmmaker's credit that the many levels of these characters are brought out rather than making them two dimensional cut outs of a predictable nature. Regardless of their horrible deeds, we are tied emotionally to these men - these robbers. We root for them and hope (we know in vain) that they will succeed.

Set In Buenos Aires in 1965, this movie is based on true events that happened at that time. If half of what is portrayed is realisitically portrayed, then the source material was a film begging to be made. Tragic and emotional, Burnt Money gives us a very exciting and engaging cops and robbers story told with thrilling scenes and touching emotional performances. Believable and believably portrayed.

It is in Spanish with English subtitles. I highly recommend this film.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent; didn't know it existed;glad it does
Review: I didn't know this film existed until I recorded it as it played post-midnight(and while I was sleeping) on a semi-alternative television station. This semi-artistic, semi-episodic film deals with a violent armoured car robbery that occurred in Argentina in the mid-60s. The protagonists, a wheelman, the mastermind behind the robbery, and two gays, Angel and Nene, must flee to Uruguay until the post-robbery "heat" cools down. Yet the "heat" doesn't cool down, and three of the four gradually emerge from their hiding place, Nene and Angel to frequent a surrealistic amusement park itself frequented by prostitutes of both sexes. Nene begins a relationship of sorts with a sympathetic female streetwalker, aggravating Angel (who is borderline psychotic)even further off the edge. The film, quite violent in parts, culminates in Angel, Nene and the wheelman's being trapped by police in an intense, fatal shootout. This film has interesting dialogue, good characterizations, and attentive period detail (the cars, at least). That written, now that I've discovered this movie via rapidly obsolescent VCR, I'm going to keep it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A roller coaster ride
Review: I have seen this movie about five times .ALL the charactors are the fit match,every body give his / her best performance,and the direction is marvellous,it is a roller coaster ride with the lots of fun and tense situations.This is the, one of the best work of marcelo pineryo to date.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Nene and Angel.....A love with incredible passion.
Review: I just caught this superb movie for the first time, and it is one of the best movies about gay love and distruction I have ever witnessed. Leonardo Sbaraglia(Nene) and Eduardo Noreiga(Angel) are stunningly beautiful and utterly convincing as gay lovers the "twins." The entire movie is beautifully short and the acting is just brilliant. Burnt Money,(Plata Quemada) will have you glued to your tv set from begining to end. It has an ending which has to be seen to be believed, and then will leave you breathless.

The movie is seething with violence, death and distruction, but at the same time there are so many quiet classic moments between Nene and Angel which are wonderfully erotic, sexy and heartwrenching, all at the same time.

Buy the DVD when it come's out, it's worth every penny.

Now,..... why does Hollywood find it so hard to produce movies like this, at least once in a while?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A honest and unusual exploration of gay relationships.
Review: I must admit I have a soft spot for foreign film - it's almost a magical experience for me to enjoy how other cultures deal with human issues, and often in a more honest way than the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Also, relying on subtitles to understand what is going on has the most amazing effect - you are forced to stare at the screen for the whole film and therefore become more engrossed in the story and characters. So when a friend sent me a copy of Burnt Money as a present I was estatic, and after viewing the movie, that elation has stayed with me.

What amazes me about most foreign films is the honesty they portray when dealing with human emotion. There is no watering-down to appeal to the lowest common denominator, but a genuine effort to get inside to our most basic thoughts and emotions.

Burnt money is no exception. The film essentially deals with a relationship between 2 men. Though unlike any film I've seen before, that relationship is detailed under the umbrella of the violent, criminal underground world. The usual themes of gay relationships are on display here, but we get to see them from a totally different perspective. This film helps to challenge our thinking and our ideals about relationships, love and change. Powerful stuff.

The DVD itself is quite handsomely packaged. The quality of the transfer is average - no benchmark DVD here but nonetheless better than what you would see on VHS. No special features at all, except for the the original trailer and four trailers for other DVD releases.

If you love being challenged, and rewarded for your patience, see Burnt Money - you won't regret it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Quite an unexpected surprise from Argentina!,
Review: I stumbled upon this movie as I was trying to find something that was neither a Hollywood marketing by numbers movie nor an "independent movie", as the latter does not guarantee that it will be any good. For examples of one of the the worst independent movies ever see "Buffalo 66" and you may never want to watch a movie again.

But back to "Burnt Money". Although I had never heard of the movie before seeing it, I took a chance as more and more, foreign directors are managing to take some of the better elements of Hollywood releases without resorting to navel gazing exercises of some independent films.

In a nutshell, this movie is superb. Although incorrectly marketed as a "steamy homosexual" movie with elements of Bonnie and Clyde, the movie is really a cinematic treat that encompasses a range of human emotions and what it may mean to love someone. Maybe the marketing got more people to see it (and that would not be a bad thing), but it's just not like you'd be lead to believe. But this is about the movie, not advertising.

The movie tells the true story of two bankrobbers, who are known as the Twins because of the emotional connection that they share, which in turn, is the impetus for how they live and rob. It's not because they simply look alike as some allude to as it refers more to the "look" in their eyes. Although these men meet in a filthy public bathroom in the mid 1960s, said seamy setting only serves as the point of departure for what is essentially a love story that to me goes beyond sexuality. Stop reading here if you don't want any story revelations....

The two lovers never actually make love (in physiological terms) or have sex during the movie. In fact, heterosexual sex abounds and so does an intriguing encounter with a female prostitute that may or may not establish that one of the lead characters is bisexual. The important point is that it's irrelevant as the story succeeds largely in part to its refusal to do the Hollywood thing, which would be to make it about being "gay" or making it a "buddy" picture. Here we have really a bunch of screwed up people looking for love and a way to connect.

Along the way we meet some great characters who are cast perfectly (without exception) and the director shows a great gift to find a balance between the personal story within a picture that looks like a million bucks (or rather $100 million in movie dollars) when it was probably financed with a great less deal of money. I am amazed how some of the more "commercial" foreign directors can make a buck go so far while the Hollywood flicks can't manage to make the same movie at any cost.

While the two leads are spectacular, so are key supporting players. There is a scene in which what is in essence, the third leading player, does a dance and you can see a star being born, much in the same manner as Brad Pitt did in "Thelma and Louise".

I am rambling a bit because I just saw the movie and I am still absorbing it. The direction is materful as is the cinematography, but what truly makes this movie for me is that the emotions are raw and it puts out there (in an interesting fashion) how passion and love are not as portrayed in Hollywood.

This is without a doubt a movie for adults. There is violence (but not more than your standard PG-13 fare in Hollywood terms), sex (as there are at least two explicit heterosexual encounters), rampant drug use and homoerotic scenes that show the true passion that the two lead characters have for one another. It also has a great scene between a female prostitute and one of the leading characters that you'd NEVER see in a Hollywood flick. This scene to me is the essence of why this movie is so good. It's not sanitized for mass consumption and in turn makes it perfect for mass consumption. I've never seen a movie like this and I could go are far as to give it a 5, but I have to save those to give real impact to those that truly stand out way above the rest. I'll give this one a 4+++++++++ and highly recommend it if you are not homophobic not are expecting soft-porn or a bunch of naked men. If so you'll be disappointed. Here you'll find people who are naked emotionally and the sexiest and most tender scenes are not those that you'd expect. In fact, with the exception of how they first met and (in my opinion another scene in a bathroom that I could have done without) there is no convention here. I hope that this movie, along with others like "Y Tu Mama Tambien" (which is one of the best movies I've ever seen) will lead to more character-driven movies both in the US and abroad.

I understand that most movie studios wonder if "it" will play in mid-America when making decisions about whether to give the go ahead for most movies, but maybe they should not think so little of mid-America and focus on financing good/promising film-makers while being present to make sure that they are not self-indulgent but a reflection of a vision that, if it's good, will find an audience. This is particularly important for movies with adult themes as for every "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" (which was ok) there may be another "Burnt Money" waiting to be made.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Burnt Money
Review: I've been a fan of Eduardo Noriega and Leonardo Sbaraglia since I saw Burnt Money in April 2003. I'd never paid much attention to movies in Spanish before except for those that earned Oscars as best foreign movies. Burnt Money changed my perception about Hispanic movies. Leonardo Sbaraglia (Nene) was wonderfully successful in coveying his loving feelings toward Eduardo Noriega (Angel) in the movie. His performance was so unique and so intense compared to those of other actors who had ever played gay characters in Hollywood. This is a wonderfully new experience for me.


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