"SAVING PRIVATE PEREZ" — ★★ — Miguel Rodarte, Jaime Camil Gerardo Taracena, Adal Ramones, Jesus Ochoa, Joaquin Cosio; in Spanish with English subtitles; PG-13 (violence and brief, strong language); Jordan Commons
The Mexican hit "Saving Private Pérez" has a fairly irresistible and subversive comic premise. An ailing mother demands that her oldest son — a Tony Montana-like gangster identified as the most powerful man in Mexico — do what the United States Army can't: go to Iraq and rescue his younger brother, an American soldier being held captive by insurgents.
"Why did he become a soldier?" Julian Pérez (Miguel Rodarte), the drug kingpin, asks plaintively. "Why did you let him go, Ma?"
For about 40 minutes the film, directed by Beto Gómez and written by Gómez and Francisco Payó González, generates laughs from that setup, as Julian recruits a team for the mission. Despite the nod in the title to Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan," this satire feeds primarily on spaghetti westerns, "The Dirty Dozen" and "The Godfather." (At one point a car horn plays the opening notes of "Speak Softly Love.")
Gathered with his warriors — a paunchy group in black cowboy hats whose members look as if they should be playing at a wedding — Julian begins the planning by asking, "Where the hell is Iraq?"
The film bogs down when this B team arrives in the desert, spooling out in a random series of dull shootouts (Gómez shows no knack for action) and mildly funny visual jokes. (When a local fixer proudly serves them a pot of his mother's soup, the Mexicans furtively pull out a bottle of hot sauce; later it will be used as an instrument of torture.) Beyond Julian, the characters are essentially interchangeable ciphers. If you don't get the jokes, there isn't a whole lot else to get, and it's a safe assumption that non-Latino, non-Spanish-speaking viewers are going to miss a lot of them.
We're also likely to appreciate only partly the serious underlying theme: what constitutes a hero in today's Mexico. "Bring my Juan back," the mother tells her No. 1 son, pausing before adding, just to be clear, "Alive!"
"Saving Private Perez" is rated PG-13 for violence and brief, strong language; running time: 102 minutes.