1 out of 5

Director: Pablo Véliz

7 Kilos starts in typical low budget plotting territory, with a coked-up drug dealer making too many enemies via lots of shooting and swearing.  He oversteps his bounds and shoots / swears at the wrong group of swearing and shooting people, then finds himself shot at.  Transition to girlfriend Camilla, who gets her hands on the 2.5 million boyfriend was sitting on, then gets herself arrested when trying to speed to freedom.  This is about 20 minutes in, the rest of the runtime is very light cat-and-mouse with the law trying to track her down in some cowpoke backroads.  Let’s back up to say that, although the general gist is nothing new, there’s more work put in to the lighting, shot composition and cinematography than would be the norm for these things.  Some of the editing tricks are pointless, but they’re dispatched with quickly and besides being pointless are uninvasive.  And there were some interesting boons – the sheriff (initially) handles things much differently than cliche would have us expect, and while I don’t buy the cowboy Cain as a love interest, except for the inevitable sex scene, he’s also written with more intelligence than cowboy machismo, which is nice.  But there’s really no reason we should like Camilla, who’s essentially our main character, and thus equally no reason for us to follow the money… The script – besides those notable character sketches – is also empty.  What happens has no reason shown or provided except that that’s what normally happens in these types of films.  And the ending – it is a sort of WTF flip, but bundled with the script’s weightlessness, it doesn’t matter.  Some talent applied in a completely generic manner.