Cronos Review

Cronos is a movie that I have adored for quite some time. One of the earliest popular films from the director Guillermo Del Toro, who would go on to direct Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth, and The Devil's Backbone, is in good form here. Although it wears its budget on its sleeve, the film is a carefully and lovingly told tale of the burden of mortality, love, and familial bonds.

We begin the film, after a brief summary of the history of the Cronos device, with shop owner Jesus Gris (played by the humble and sophisticated Federico Luppi), who unknowingly is the owner of the device. Not much background is given as to how he came across the statue the device is hidden in, and when we finally see where it is hidden, it is highly unlikely that it was never encountered before-- but this is such a minor point that it is easily overlooked.

The reason he does go looking for the device is indirectly related to the abrasive Angel, played by the ever-delightful Ron Perlman. A hoodlum seemingly working under Angel goes pawing through the artifacts in Jesus' store. When Jesus approaches the guy (essentially because the guy Angel sends looks like an epic douchebag with sticky fingers), he essentially runs away, leaving Angel to look at the item he was thinking of stealing-- a highly improbable (due to it being huge) statue of an angel. However, the hoodlum did not leave before poking a hole through the statue's face.

Like I said, epic douchebag with sticky fingers.

At any rate, Jesus doesn't think much of this, until his grand-daughter, Aurora, gets 'attacked' by a cockroach that crawls out of the hole made by the douchebag. Aurora proceeds to flip her $hi! big time, shocking her grandfather into telling her that, perhaps-- just perhaps-- she is just pissing off the bugs (although he words it differently).

This causes Jesus to dig into the statue, where he finds the cronos device, and thus begins the downfall of poor Jesus. As it turns out, a rich old fart (Dieter de la Guardia, who leaves notes repeatedly that he is “open all night”) is after the device in order to become immortal, and has basically been scouring the world for it. By the time Angel actually brings Dieter the statue, Jesus had already taken it out and had begun playing with it (in what may be a creepy allegory for drug use). This makes Dieter flip his $h!t too, and basically goes on a rampage to get the device back.

No, that's not creepy... not at all...

In true drug-addict fashion, however, Jesus refuses to give up the device even when his grand-daughter catches him essentially getting high. Nope, it is much better to keep it for himself than to send it off to an old fart businessman.

And in the cross-fire, Jesus ends up dying. But, as we already should have surmised, this is not the end.

The rest of the film is a fairly predictable romp trying to avoid Angel's violence and keep his grand-daughter protected. Although the story, at this point, essentially stops twisting completely,the remainder becomes more an exploration of the effect his decisions have made on Jesus and those around him. The film ends on a sweet note, made all the more bittersweet by a dedication shortly afterwards.

The film, like all of the work by Guillermo del Toro, is a visual feast. The pacing is somewhat slowed by the obvious budgetary limitations, but what is there is fantastic-- a specific treat is a view of the inside of the cronos device, which is shot with absolute breathtaking detail by del Toro's frequent collaborator, cinematographer Guillermo Navarro.

Ah curses, light. F---'er.

This film harkens back to at once a more gritty, brutal vampire than perhaps our teenage girls are used to, but also a much more human one than in the godawful twit-light series. Like films such as Interview with a Vampire, the pathos of immortality is explored in torturous emotional detail, but the interesting thing from a vampire-flick perspective is del Toro's allegory of vampirism as a sort of drug-addiction, destroying all those around the 'addict'.

I thought it was, especially for the time (and even now) a novel approach to the vampire mythos that makes sense in context of the mythology-- once again, unlike the heavily modified and neutered vampire of more modern vampire films.

I give the film a 95%-- not only due to it being the first feature film by del Toro, giving it a historic significance, but on the strengths of the film itself, which offers all of the things that make del Toro a great director, though perhaps in the minutae of a lower budget.