Marlon Moreno Movies
Voodoo and greed serve as the catalysts for a wild ride through the brutal Columbian underworld in director/co-screenwriter Carlos Moreno's entry into the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. El Orejón may be one of the most notorious crime bosses in Columbia, yet despite his violent reputation, the agoraphobic don rarely ventures outside of his luxury high-rise apartment -- instead opting to keep tabs on the streets via the many telescopes that line his windowed walls. After his godson William is brutally gunned down, a vengeful El Orejón implores voodoo priestess Iris to put a hex on the triggerman. At the exact same time, miles away, small-town thug Victor sets out to collect some missing money from two scheming twins. When Victor decides to skirt the laws of the street and keep the cash for himself, the disastrous chain reaction caused by his decision gains so much momentum that it may be impossible to stop. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Marlon Moreno, Oscar Borda, (more)
A handful of soldiers are faced with the ultimate temptation, which impacts their ethical standards in different ways in this comedy-drama from Colombia. Perlaza (Carlos Manuel Vesga), Lloreda (Diego Cadavid), Venegas (Juan Sebastian Aragon) and Porras (Manuel Jose Chaves) are four G.I.'s in the Colombian Army who are part of a counter-guerilla unit dedicated to ferreting out revolutionaries who've set up camp in the nation's jungles. Porras is married and a dedicated family man, while the others are single and like to party hard when they're not on duty. While cleaning up after they're ambushed by guerillas, one of the soldiers makes a surprising discovery -- several tubs buried in the jungle which hold $40 million in cash, hidden by drug kingpins in cahoots with the guerillas. While Porras predictably maintains they should leave the money alone and tell their commander Lizarazo (Marlon Moreno) about it, the others want to take the fortune for themselves. However, hiding $40 million from Lizarazo proves to be a difficult task, and spending the money without drawing attention to themselves isn't much easier. Directed by Rodrigo Triana, an established name in Colombian television, Sonar No Cuesta Nada (aka A Ton Of Luck) was based on a true story and became a major box-office attraction at home when it opened as its real-life counterparts were on trial. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Diego Cadavid, Juan Sebastian Aragon, (more)
Antonio Dorado Z. directs the Spanish-language historical drama El Rey (AKA The King), starring Fernando Solórzano, Cristina Umaña, Olivier Pages, Marion Moreno and Vanessa Simon. The picture - a Colombian-French-Spanish co-production - won the Best Spanish-Language Foreign Film Award at the 2004 Goyas (Spain's equivalent of the Oscars). Though Dorado's film lasts a mere eighty-four minutes, it recounts, in epic form, the entire gestalt of the Colombian drug trafficking movement, from the forties through the present. El Rey opens with the ironic incident of Colombian president's Mariano Ospina Pérez innocuous request for hemp seeds from India, to boost the local economy - a request that accidentally pulled in Cannabis sativa by mistake. It then rolls along to cover such developments as the political violence of the fifties and Kennedy's establishment of Alliance for Progress to wipe out Communism in the sixties. The central narrative thread that unites the broader historical events throughout the picture involves the interaction of three partially fictionalized characters: Lieutenant Maluco - a Department of Administrative Security Officer; El Pollo - a Cuban troublemaker who stirred up incendiary political conflicts in the mid-fifties; and Pulgarín, a corrupt-to-the-bone police lieutenant. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
- Starring:
- Fernando Solorzano, Cristina Umana, (more)
