Edgardo Roman Movies

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, All Movie Guide

This Colombian ensemble comedy, scathingly examines violence and official corruption in the tumultuous Latin American country. The story is told in flashback. In Colombia there is a law that states if an abandoned estate is occupied by squatters for a certain period of time, the land becomes theirs by default ( at the turn of the century, many wealthy landowners left their farms as the country became urbanized). The law becomes the basis of conflict when the original owners of the 48 room mansion the Olive House, aka "The Coop" by the squatters, come to reclaim it. The squatters there resist. A lawyer delays the eviction. Meanwhile a former theatrical stage manager devises an ingenious plot. The tenants, using pulleys and levers, take apart the house leaving only the facade. As they work, the personal quirks of each squatter and his or her relationship with the others are revealed. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This suspenseful Italian crime drama is set in a Colombian river town and chronicles the series of events that led up to murder. Based on a novel by distinguished author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the tale begins in the present as a middle-aged doctor returns to the village after a twenty-year absence to investigate the murder that occurred just before he left. A flashback ensues. All the trouble began when a wealthy general's son came to town searching for a bride. He found an appropriate girl and was very happy until he discovered that his bride was not a virgin. In a terrible rage he sent the poor girl back to her family where her father beat her into revealing her lover's name. Her twin brothers then set out to punish the guilty fellow, a much-despised womanizer. Though the entire town knew that the brothers planned to kill him, no one intervened. Strangely, the victim died without a fight. The story jumps back to the present to witness the return of the general's son. He runs into his former fiancee and quietly hands back all of the letters she had written him over the years. Not a single one is opened. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this mystery, a vengeful husband goes looking for the six people who tortured him and then killed his wife. The husband is a WW II vet and one of the killers is now a high-ranking German official. The plot is based on a Mario Puzo story. The film is also titled Seven Graves for Rogan. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide