The only thing I knew about City of Dreams was that it was an immigrant story. The person who said that was sugar-coating it because, yeah, its an immigrant story in the same way Grave of the Fireflies is about picking flowers. Yeesh.

The film is about young Mexican boy who is trafficked across the border and sold into slavery in Los Angeles. Specifically, as a (literal) underground sweat shop child laborer where he spends all day sewing knock-off clothing.

When it became evident this was gonna be about hot button topics, I almost got up and left. The well has been poisoned over this topic and I wasn’t sure if I was gonna be watching wild-eyed propaganda. But I stuck to it, wondering if I was gonna have to write a nervous negative review like with Sound of Freedom.

And, yeah, the movie starts out slow as the kid is forced to… sew clothing (in between beatings) for the first act. Conditions underground are terrible and I have human emotions so it’s bad, but it wasn’t very interesting or compelling. The problem is that the kid never speaks so I had no inroads to how he felt or what he thought. Presumably the answer is “to escape” but he’s such a blank slate, giving us nothing.

But eventually the movies comes around in a weird, borderline disrespectful way. It turns into a horror movie. I mean, this whole scenario is a horror show, but the actual language of the film switches from drama to literal horror/suspense mode. I say disrespectful since I love horror movies but I was uncomfortable turning this real life horror show into fun/scary genre filmmaking.

But once the kid (minor spoiler) escapes into the streets of LA, a funny thing happens. The film turns into a pretty fantastic chase sequence complete with long takes and clever, acrobatic camera work. It goes from horror to action/adventure and I realized I was rooting for this kid to find freedom. There’s more to the film that follows, but this bravura sequence sold me on the kid’s plight through expertly crafted active filmmaking.

Almost despite myself, I realized this was a very good film. Not because it’s about an Important Topic – Very Special Episode can be well-intentioned and still suck – but because it’s a pretty solid piece of genre filmmaking overlaid across an Important Topic. It reminds us movies have to be good before they teach us important life lessons.

Score: 82