Not So <i> Bueno</i>

Whatever mainstream American critics might say about “Old Gringo”--Columbia Picture’s romantic saga about Mexico-U.S. relations during the Mexican Revolution in 1913--the film has proven revolting to a number of Latino newspaper reviewers here and in Mexico.

El Financiero’s Jorge Ayala Blanco, a leading Mexican film critic and scholar, said “Gringo” resurrects old cliches and creates new ones: “It is bad literature about la mexicanidad (Mexico’s national character),” he wrote bluntly.

Sabado’s Gustavo Garcia: “The film is a series of lies about the Mexicans. It portrays death as something Mexicans don’t fear, something we laugh at . . . “

La Jornada’s Araceli Hernandez praised the film’s “dazzling movements, especially those scenes that capture the ambience and language of the revolution.”

But Felipe Coria of Uno mas Uno decried a scene in which General Tomas Arroyo (Jimmy Smits) shoots Ambrose Bierce (Gregory Peck) in the back: “It will only reinforce preconceived notions gringos have about the savageness and brutality of the Mexican.”

Stateside, several Latino film critics vented their views on last week’s airing of Telemundo’s “Cara a Cara,” a national Spanish language public-affairs TV program.

“Technically, it’s a beautiful movie,” declared Jorge Camara of local Spanish-language KVEA-TV. “But the story of the film’s main characters isn’t clear. It doesn’t move you.”

Other complaints: The stereotypical portrayal of Mexican women as prostitutes and the character of Arroyo, an undisciplined, brutal revolutionary general. Latino critics decried the character as atypical of the revolution, even griping that his accent was more “Puerto Rican than Mexican.”