I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Sombra and Santos are aimless youths in Mexico City. There is a student strike at the University and the guys are striking against the strike. Sombra is surprised to find Tomás at his apartment. He's been sent there by their mother. Mexican rock musician Epigmenio Cruz is supposedly hospitalized and Tomás wants to visit him. The guys search for him and encounter a series of incidents.The first forty minutes are aimless. It's a lazy hazy afternoon of nothing dramatic. It could be a lost start and then the road trip happens. The situations get more interesting. It's all in black and white. It has a dreamy quality. It has some compelling moments and an overall feel of adventure.

Set in 1999 against a backdrop of student protests, Güeros is a road movie that becomes a voyage of discovery for three rootless young people seeking to bridge the gap between aimlessness and social purpose. The debut feature film by Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios received twelve nominations at the 57th Ariel Awards, the Mexican equivalent of the Oscars, winning five of them including Best Film, Best Director, Best First Film, Best Sound, and Best Cinematography (Damian Garcia). Shot in black-and-white, the film is evocative of the French New Wave, balancing highly structured sequences with segments of spontaneous and playful improvisation.In the film, Tomas (Sebastian Aguirre), a disruptive pre-teen in Veracruz is sent by his overburdened mom to Mexico City to live with his brother Federico (Tenoch Huerta), a slacker college student known as Sombra because of his dark skin. Tomas is called a "güeros" because of his lighter complexion underscoring an element of racial conflict in Mexican society. Living with his similarly uninvolved roommate, Santos (Leonardo Ortizgris) in an apartment complex in Copilco that looks as if it's next on the waiting list for demolition, Sombra's position on the student strike is firmly in the middle, saying that he is "on strike against the strike." His daily activity consists of …well, nothing much. He and Santos sit around watching TV by borrowing an electrical cord from a little girl downstairs, an action that does not sit too well with the girl's father.Bored, Tomas decides that a little adventure never hurt anyone and comes up with a plan to find Epigmiento Cruz in order to have him sign their well-worn cassette tape. An enigmatic folk singer from the sixties who their father loved, Cruz is a symbol of something bigger than them,a larger than life hero who can make them see what's behind things. As Sombra says, "If you can see behind things, the only thing they can't take away from you is that feeling." Though the singer is rumored to be sick or dying, little güerito tells Fede that Cruz "once made Bob Dylan cry," presumably an accomplishment worthy of a place in the hall of fame. The trip, according to Ruizpalacios, was inspired by Bob Dylan's journey to visit an ailing Woody Guthrie in the hospital during the late 50s. Shrugging off a panic attack which is carefully explained to him at the hospital, Sombra visits the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) where students are on strike to show their disagreement with the administration's decision to instate an enrollment fee even though the University had always been free. Sombra, Santos, and Tomas walk into an auditorium overflowing with protesters listening to Sombra's former girlfriend Ana (Ilse Salas) speaking in front of the room. The scene is filled with shouting and confrontation, a chaotic depiction not to the liking of some former protesters who complained about the unserious tone of the segment. As Ana joins the trio to look for Cruz, their quest leads them to a pool party where well-to-do intellectuals muse about the sorry state of Mexican cinema.Here the film engages in a sort of self-parody as one director complains that all Mexican movies deliver a picture of impoverished beggars to satisfy Western audiences at film festivals. Sombra also chimes in, saying that Mexicans are often portrayed as cheaters, atheists, prostitutes and alcoholics. Güeros ultimately takes many detours and shifts of perspective but, though it is episodic in structure, never loses its footing as the search for the legendary Epigmiento allows the seekers to move from a place of apathy to one of self-acceptance and commitment.Ruizpalacios describes the film's central theme as "the change from being static to being in movement. Healing through movement." However you interpret Güeros' message, the film has an invigorating appeal: fresh, playful, and meaningful, even suggesting at one point that the seeming randomness of life is guided by divine purpose. Sombra says at one point that "If the world is a train station and the people are the passengers, those who stay at the station and watch the trains go by are the poets, the ones who come and won't go." Tomas is one who watches the trains depart, seeing as we all have once with the innocent eyes of discovery as the city unfolds before his eyes with all its massive contradictions, encompassing the best and worst of humanity.

A voguish feature debut from Mexican filmmaker Alonso Riuzpalacios, shot entirely in Black and White with an uncommon 1.37:1 aspect ratio. GUEROS is a pristine debut full of promise but also sink into the filmmaker's own ideal existential wallow.In the opening scenes, the film directly prints the explanation of the word "güeros" on the screen, in case us foreign audience cannot catch the meaning, and it proposes two options, it is either a discrimination against colour or against homosexuality. And the film only deals one of the two. Set the backdrop of an undefined time (where Walkman is still popular, I suppose, should be in the 90s), Tomás (Aguirre) is a young boy lived with his widow mother, being too naughty, he is sent to live with his big brother Federico aka. Sombra (Huerta), who is a college student living with his roommate Santos (Ortizgris) in their messy apartment.While the university students are in the middle of a massive strike. The trio lay around in the apartment doing nothing. Since Tomás is a devotee of an over-the-hill musician Epigmenio Cruz (Charpener), who is sent to hospital due to poor health, the news triggers his quest to find him and ask for an autograph. So the story maunders around a two-day road trip, en route they visit the hospital, bump into some dangerous thug, reunite with Ana (Salas), a fervent activist student in the campus, party-crash, go to the zoo while Sombra has to face his worst nightmare, a tiger, and eventually track down Epigmenio in a remote cantina. Ostensibly, it is another plot-doesn't-matter ethos-journey combined with political agenda, budding romance, surrealistic touch, fly-on-the-wall realism and the dry humour.The picture exudes appealing élan thanks to its swift camera movement, monochromatic freshness and the idiosyncratic treatment of the fictional Cruz's music - a muffled void defies categorisation. But, the momentum doesn't hold up, soon, the journey deflates into an aimless wander, pry into the underbelly of a contemporary Mexico but never reach a cinematic catharsis or produce any prospective worth of excitement, the main characters are bankrupt of any empathy or charisma to keep up audience's attention of their often arbitrary behaviour. It is a film eventually fails to live up to its master-class craftsmanship, but considering its successful tournament in the international festival circuits, I might again find myself in a minority of one, to each his own taste, GÜEROS doesn't emerge as a comprehensively outstanding film in spite of its uniqueness.

This movie is black and white and it has a different frame ratio. At first, i thought they were going to do it because they wanted it to look like an art film but if you ask me, from what i watched, i am certain that this was done because of artistic and also satiric reasons. This movie is a great drama and also is a great comedy. Directing is really unique. Movie doesn't treat it's audience like they are stupid people. Movie respects the audience. For example, instead of a broken elevator sign, you see the inside of the elevator and you see that it doesn't come. When the character goes in a dark room, actor isn't pretending to be in a dark room, it is not a low lighted room that you can see but actor can't, you also can't see anything and it feels real. When a character closes other's eyes, before you see that, also your view is blocked by hands on the camera, which is your eyes. You feel like you are inside the film and it is amazingly done. When they listen to the song that should be amazing you hear nothing at all because they want you to imagine it since it will be different for everyone. And there is a scene in the school that it is really really funny and intelligently done. I won't spoil but i was laughing way too much at it. Movie tells a few different stories, panic attack, love, friendship, revolution and a whole other themes that are followed by their own scenes. Every thing in the movie leads somewhere and in every ending, it remind us that the world is cruel.Movie is funny, dramatic and exciting and overall it is very good. It makes fun of the Mexican so called art movies and also that maybe the cause of the black and white colour of the film. And it succeeds to be satiric in a good way. I am giving this 8/10 because i felt like it dragged a little on the last act. But, nonetheless i found it to be very intelligent.