Critics scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.
out of 100
Metascore®Mixed or average reviewsbased on a weighted average of allcritic review scores.
The real crime is the way that the movie turns Gael García Bernal, the hot-tempered, Roman-lipped costar of ''Y Tu Mamá También, into a backwater Freddie Prinze Jr.
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Respectably crafted to avoid lurid excess, feature is nonetheless a bit potboilerish in its pileup of sexy, violent, duplicitous circumstances that plague the consciences of latter-day clergymen.
The tone is that of a telenovela -- soap-operatic at heart -- even though the film was adapted from a 19th-century novel.
The remarkable things about the new film, adapted by Vicente Leñero and directed by Carlos Carrera, are how smoothly it has been transposed to today's Mexico and how far good acting and skillful directing have gone toward tempering those melodramatic roots.
A suds-filled political melodrama that bashes the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico with a contempt that verges on hysteria, could be accused of many things, but timidity is not one of them.
It's more of a melodrama, a film that doesn't say priests are bad but observes that priests are human and some humans are bad.
Not an indictment of the Catholic Church as a whole, but a thought-provoking look at what can happen when decent individuals are seduced by the power of their position.
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by lizcass
