Customer Reviews

The Brute (El Bruto) [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I loved this film. It has all the classic elements of Bunuel's films during his Mexican era: dysfunctional relationships, sexual obsession, misery, social struggle, and violence with a surrealist background. Pedro Armendariz, the brute, is hired by a greedy landlord to intimidate a group of poor tenants. Armendariz's portrayal of the brainless thug is formidable. Kathy Jurado plays the sensual wife of the landlord. The intricate web of relationships grows to be more complicated as the story develops into murder, love, and infidelity. This is classic melodrama at its best. Critics consider The Brute to be one of Bunuel's more simplistic films. I think this makes The Brute quite a unique movie. The film develops just like the rough and brutal demeanor of Armendariz's character. The Brute also captures a piece of Mexico's social struggles. The tenants are being displaced out their homes because of the grandiose plans of development of a corrupt landlord played by Soler. The love scenes are rustic and primeval creating an obvious parallel with the violent scenes and it has, of course, Bunuel's traditional surrealist sequences of farm animals. I strongly recommend this film. If you are a Bunuel aficionado, a fan of international film, or just looking for a melodramatic rush you have to watch The Brute.

see this film to understand the burning love between Gary Cooper and Katy Jurado in High Noon: this is how he remembers her and why he still loves her.

In a word she is BAD in this movie, to die for. She's married to a landlord who wants to kick everyone out into the street, and gets a slaughterhouse worker to do his dirty work. Katy shows her elderly landlord how, by cutting chrysthanemums, and then falls for the muscle while keeping back. THe girl is bad, and beautiful.

Get this movie. I pray Criterion loves it enough to release it on DVD. Turns out it is available in DVD on amazon. but mislabelled if you can find it. use search word bruto. nuff sed.

"El Bruto" is a drama filled with moral dilemmas and irony. The story starts with a wealthy man named Andrés (Andrés Soler) and his much younger wife named Paloma (Katy Jurado) having the problem of having tenants not wanting to leave their apartment complex. They want to sell the land, but some of the tenants are quite fixed on the idea of not leaving. At his wife's suggestion, Andrés gets the idea to ask Pedro (Pedro Armendáriz) to help him out. Pedro is known as the Brute because he is big and is as strong as an ox, but he is a little dimwitted too.

Andrés invites Pedro to live in his house, which complicates things as Peloma starts to secretly like Pedro. When Pedro intimidates one of the tenants with a strong punch, the Brute begins to have troubles. The old man he punched ends up dying a couple days later and the Brute has blood on his hands now. To further make matters worse, Pedro ends up meeting Meche (Rosa Arenas), the daughter of the man he killed, and likes her a lot. Pedro/Bruto isn't entirely dumb, as he is crafty enough to seduce this innocent girl. While the story may sound like a soap opera, it doesn't feel like one.

Throughout the story there is an underlining feeling of seduction. Between Peloma trying to seduce Pedro and Pedro trying to seduce Meche, there is a lot of tension. Although much of the action takes place off camera, we know that there is quite a bit going on between them.

Luis Buñuel's "El Bruto" looks beautiful in black and white, with great music that perfectly matches it. The story is quite interesting as it shows the strange justice karma brings with past actions affecting the future events. The story isn't at all romantic in the sense of everything coming together with a happy ending, but rather a string of tragedies that take us deeper into a mess that seems trickier to unentangle with the passage of time.

Esta pelicula demuestra que Buñuel puede dirigir como sea, lo que sea. No es una de sus hobras maestras sino que es una palícula en la que se tiene que adaptar a un formato pleestablecido con muy poco espacio de maniobra y lo hace muy bien. La pelicula tiene buena trama, aunque un poco trillada. Se explora el lado del pobre que es sirviente de los ricos traicionadno sus origenes. Este tipo de personaje facinaban a Bueñuel (Mayordomos, curas, policias, mandaderos, etc). Es un filme que vale la pena verlo.