SAVING PRIVATE PEREZ

Name: SAVING PRIVATE PEREZ
Item: SAVING PRIVATE PEREZ
Author: Review

“Lame “Action” Comedy”

Family Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

SAVING PRIVATE PEREZ is a very slow Mexican action comedy. Julian Perez is Mexico’s most powerful drug lord. There is only one person he fears and respects – his mother. In the hospital, his mother tells Julian that the only way she’ll forgive him for his life of crime is if he goes to war-torn Iraq and brings his enlisted brother Juan back alive. Muslim insurgents have captured Juan and intend to behead him. With help from his right-hand man, Julian assembles a team of men to help him rescue Juan. Julian’s goofy band of misfits is like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. They are clearly out of their depth. When they finally get to Iraq, they not only have to dodge insurgent bullets but bullets from the United States Army as well.

It takes about a full hour for Julian’s team to get to Iraq. By that time, viewers are unlikely to care about this lame movie. SAVING PRIVATE PEREZ plays like a light, unfunny action comedy. It lacks a strong moral center and contains brief foul language, violence, and several minor characters that appear to be homosexual.

Content:

(B, C, P, APAP, L, VV, S, NN, A, DD, M) Very light moral worldview with light brief Christian content and symbols in background but the major characters are mostly gangsters, some of whom are trying to rescue a soldier taken prisoner in Iraq, with some Pro-Mexico patriotic content, but also some strong Anti-American content regarding U.S. soldiers in Iraq; seven mostly light obscenities (no “f” or “s” words though “MF” word is started but not completed; lots of action violence mostly in the second half with a couple comical pratfalls and situations such as gunfire, explosions, tank destroys ice cream truck, men fall into oil pipeline, teenage boy kills gangster who bullied his mother and siblings with a slingshot, man threatens to kill teenager, fighting; no sex scenes but four minor characters appear to be homosexual but no explicit references; an image of a gaudy nude statue and some upper male nudity, including one man in a speedo; brief alcohol use; brief cigar smoking and people smoke hookahs, implying hashish; and, Mexicans shoot at U.S. soldiers in Iraq who shoot back, gangster bullies family after his gang killed their father/husband off screen.

More Detail:

SAVING PRIVATE PEREZ is a very slow Mexican action comedy about a drug lord taking a group of men to Iraq in 2003 to save his soldier brother, who’s been taken prisoner and is about to be beheaded. Julian Perez is Mexico’s most powerful drug lord, but there is one person he fears – his mother. In the hospital, his mother tells Julian that the only way she’ll forgive him for his life of crime is if he goes to war-torn Iraq and brings his enlisted brother Juan back alive. Julian orders his right-hand man, Eliado, who wears pink suits, to assemble a team of men to help him rescue Juan, who’s been taken prisoner by insurgents. Julian’s goofy band of misfits is like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. They are clearly out of their depth. When they finally get to Iraq, they not only have to dodge insurgent bullets but bullets from the United States Army as well. It takes about a full hour for Julian’s team to get to Iraq. By that time, viewers are unlikely to care what’s happening in this week, silly, unbelievable, and highly forgettable “action” comedy. Flashbacks about how Julian started his life of crime as a young teenager just extend the cinematic torture. Needless to say, having a group of drug dealers, gangsters, and hitmen be the ones to save Julian’s courageous brother doesn’t make for a really uplifting time at the movies, even though SAVING PRIVATE PEREZ plays like a light action comedy. Julian does seem to learn the value of family, but an epilogue title seems to indicate that Julian resumed his life of crime and received his just deserts. Even so, this is itself depressing. The movie should have shown Julian changing his ways. SAVING PRIVATE PEREZ also contains brief foul language, violence, and implications that the protagonist’s right-hand man is homosexual, along with three other more minor characters.