Exposure

Most of this you've seen before and seen done better. Coyote stars as photographer Peter Mandrake (subtle name, eh?) who's working in Rio de Janeiro taking shots of the bustling street life. He suffers from the disease all movie photographers suffer from: that of being an impassive witness to life's dramas. One of his photographic studies is a young model named Gisela (Gam) who, as a lark, steals a computer disk from one of her johns. Gisela had asked for Mandrake's help in returning the disk but before they can accomplish this, Gisela turns up dead (brutally mutilated, I might add -- which we witness during the film's opening sequence). This injustice is what prompts Mandrake into action. It leads him into a nasty subculture of illegal arms dealers and drug traffickers. These are not nice people and they play very dirty. Their goons break into Mandrake's apartment, stabbing him in the gut and terrorizing Mandrake's girlfriend (Pays). So what's Mandrake's recourse? He employs someone named Hermes (more subtlety) to teach him the art of knife fighting (in long instructional slice-and-dice scenes). His descent into violence is enough to make his girlfriend leave him. Mandrake pursues Gisela's murderers/his attackers throughout Brazil and into Bolivia. It's a seemingly convoluted trail (but not really, when you think about it later) and for a suspense thriller, it's sorely lacking in tension and intrigue. This first narrative feature from Brazilian director Salles, Jr. (who has an extensive career as a documentary filmmaker) moves slowly and purposelessly through all-too-familiar dramatic territory. The only terrain that's new involves the sights of Brazil and Bolivia. Exposure captures the images and sounds of Rio street life -- from its death-defying train surfing boys to its gregarious swirl of social activity and from the unpopulated Brazilian lowlands to the Indian plateaus of Bolivia. Capturing these moments is what this movie does best. It's in telling its story that Exposure gets into trouble.