{"id":9506,"date":"2010-07-06T21:47:34","date_gmt":"2010-07-07T05:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=9506"},"modified":"2010-07-06T21:47:34","modified_gmt":"2010-07-07T05:47:34","slug":"presumed-guilty-roberto-hernandez-2008-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=9506","title":{"rendered":"Presumed Guilty (Roberto Hernandez, 2008): Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Richard Feilden<\/a>. \u00a0Viewed at Regal Cinemas, Los Angeles Film Festival.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The American legal system is often attacked for making it too easy for criminals to escape justice.\u00a0 Smart lawyers and legal loopholes are letting the guilty back onto the streets, talking heads on TV scream.\u00a0 Presumed Guilty<\/em><\/a>, from director Roberto Hernandez, examines the world on the other side of the Texan fence, the justice system of Mexico.\u00a0 They unravel the case of Antonio Z\u00fa\u00f1iga, a young man sent to prison for twenty years for a murder they say he did not commit.<\/p>\n

The evidence seems to weigh in favor of Antonio.\u00a0 The only witness to the crime didn\u2019t even mention Antonio\u2019s presence until he made his third statement, one in which he was, he admits, coached by the police.\u00a0 Forensic evidence suggests Antonio hadn\u2019t fired a gun, independent witnesses place him at work at the time of the shooting, and the police artist\u2019s sketches have mysteriously vanished.\u00a0 But none of this matters in a system where the police are paid based on their arrest record and the court system is based not on the prosecution\u2019s attempts to prove guilt, but on your struggle to prove innocence.<\/p>\n

Roberto and fellow law student Layda Negrete took up Antonio\u2019s case as part of a project looking into such travesties of justice, apparently rife in this archaic, unfair system. \u00a0\u00a0Based on their discovery that a prosecuting lawyer had forged Antonio\u2019s driving license, they manage to force a retrial.\u00a0 The film then tells that story, over roughly two and a half years.\u00a0 Wielding their cameras in a vain attempt to force the system into honesty, they mount an offensive against what is demonstrated to be a callous, contemptuous, organization that feels itself to be both above the law and human compassion.\u00a0 As a senior police officer leers at the defense council, as the prosecutor refuses to declare to the court her argument for guilt, you quickly come to realize that the man in the dock has no chance and start to wonder how these people live with themselves.<\/p>\n

In drawing attention to such a flawed system this is a worthy film.\u00a0 It is not however without some serious flaws of its own.\u00a0 In its attempts to humanize its protagonist, it draws on events outside of the legal battle, plucking at the heart strings with a behind-bars wedding and a pregnancy that results from a conjugal visit (there is no thought given to the foolishness of forging ahead with a family when the mother is struggling to keep herself above the poverty line and Dad is in jail).\u00a0 While it is obviously important to keep the audience aware of the human tragedy that is playing out Mexico\u2019s jails, the film becomes too manipulative for its own good.<\/p>\n

There is also the question of Antonio himself.\u00a0 At the beginning of the film he says that he resigned himself to his fate due to some devastating, heartbreaking event in his life, but we are never told what that is.\u00a0 What led him to pray for death or jail?\u00a0 While he certainly seems innocent of this crime, is there another incident, not mentioned on camera that led the police to frame him, beyond their own greed?\u00a0 None of this condones their actions (normally I\u2019d complain that they weren\u2019t given the opportunity to voice their side, but they didn\u2019t seem keen to talk to the cameras!), nor the obviously flawed system, but it leaves niggling doubts about the films honesty which would have been better answered.<\/p>\n

Presumed Guilty is a film well worth watching, for it draws attention to justice system that seems rife with corruption.\u00a0 It is just a pity that its own tactics are more than a little suspect at times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Richard Feilden. \u00a0Viewed at Regal Cinemas, Los Angeles Film Festival. The American legal system is often attacked for making it too easy for criminals to escape justice.\u00a0 Smart lawyers and legal loopholes are letting the guilty back onto the streets, talking heads on TV scream.\u00a0 Presumed Guilty, from director Roberto Hernandez, examines the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,144],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","category-los-angeles-film-festival-2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}