‘City of Dreams’ Review: Contrived Drama About Human Trafficking and Modern-Day Slavery Squanders Top-Notch Cast (2024)

Last year’s “Sound of Freedom” made a splash at the box-office appealing to conspiracy theorists and religious groups and convincing audiences that watching it was a morally righteous action taken against those perpetuating the horrors of human trafficking.

“City of Dreams,” from producer-turned writer-director Mohit Ramchandani, seeks to repeat the formula. The “must-see” account this time comes from the perspective of non-verbal 15-year-old Jesús (Ari López) from the state of Puebla in central Mexico. With the promise that he’ll partake in a soccer camp, a cartel-backed trafficker (actor Francisco Denis in an embarrassingly awful part) convinces his father to let him go alone. Instead, the boy is held against his will inside a dark, windowless Los Angeles home that functions as clandestine clothing manufacturing operation. Throughout the ordeal, Jesús holds on to his dream of playing in a packed stadium, which materializes on screen as shiny dreamlike sequences.

In hopes of appealing to Latino viewers, the drama boasts high-profile producers such as Oscar-nominated Mexican actress and activist Yalitza Aparicio, Puerto Rican “Despacito” singer Luis Fonsi, and filmmaker Luis Mandoki, whose movie “Innocent Voices,” about a child surviving in war-torn El Salvador, is thematically akin. Aparicio’s attachment to the project isn’t the only on-screen connection to Alfonso Cuarón’s Oscar-winning “Roma,” since actor Jorge Antonio Guerrero (Fermín in “Roma”) has a small part here as Jesus’ father. But despite the collection of names aboard this movie because of its built-in social change component, the end product can’t get by solely on the relevance of its message.

Ramchandani’s baffling screenplay contains the most obvious, stock archetypes of people recurrent in Hollywood’s uninteresting depictions of Latino communities. Yet, its dialogue, which ranges from the laughably stereotypical to the downright absurd in the context of a sweatshop, stands out as the most unforgivable affront. The use of language rings narratively nonsensical. Somehow Jesús and the other presumably recent immigrants from Latin America inside this facility understand English and speak to each other in that tongue. Or perhaps they were able to learn it fluently in the almost non-existent spare moments that their captors allow for? The use of Spanish proves even stranger with characters choosing to use their first tongue in situations where speaking English would actually seem more logical. The lack of cultural awareness or care here astounds for its conspicuousness.

Chilean actor Alfredo Castro, one of Latin America’s most versatile performers often seen in Pablo Larraín’s films, plays a Shakespearian villain known as “El Jefe” delivering grand speeches, while Mexican actor Diego Calva, who broke out with his role in Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon,” appears as Carlitos, another exploited immigrant who’s reached his breaking point. The most forced Spanglish lines fall on Andrés Delgado as Cesar, the tattooed discipline enforcer. Their turns are driven to cartoonish overacting in great part by the words they’ve been asked to say in English and in angry tones. It’s rather painful to witness a cast that includes objectively talented performers squandered in this manner. Late in the film Ramchandani shows intentions to assign Cesar and “El Jefe” their own struggles with the “American Dream”: the former wants to attend college, while the leader of the operation hopes to bring his son from his home country. These meager efforts to humanize them further in a couple shots does little to improve their platitudinous conception.

López’s performance benefits from not having lines to deliver. The fresh-faced thespian holds the picture together as he at least convincingly embodies the extreme distress that anyone in the character’s circ*mstances would experience. Jesús, however, is at the center of several thematic elements that sink “City of Dreams” deeper into the land of bad ideas. After being brutally beaten, Jesús receives help for his wounds from a girl also in captivity. The image begs to work as a religious allegory. Then there’s the tone-deaf depiction of an Indigenous healer in traditional attire during gruesome passages that imply Jesús has been cursed since birth. Also add in a subplot involving a police officer trying to unearth dirt on the criminal organization behind these abuses as he faces accusations of police brutality.

Clashing with the disappointingly contrived writing, there’s competent filmmaking all around. Cinematographers Alejandro Chávez and Trevor Roach shoot the underworld where the victims work and live with limited light sources creating a drab, oppressive environment that highlight the subhuman conditions they are subjected to. An impressive chase that begins inside an enormous warehouse before moving to the alleys in Downtown L.A.’s Garment District takes López through hallways, doors, sidewalks, and balconies with what looks like the presence of a handheld camera. It’s a shame that the visibly sumptuous production value can’t atone for the more notorious pitfalls.

The kicker is that “City of Dreams” concludes with an actual call to action following a final title card. Out of costume, young López addresses the audience denouncing politicians and celebrities who don’t do enough to end these dehumanizing practices (not wrong) and urges the audience to tell others about the film. Ramchandani couldn’t more clearly state that the film’s artistic merits are secondary to the “impact.” There’s no denying the seriousness of the subject matter at hand, as well as the need to address it wholistically, but when message overpowers all else in storytelling, a strange breed of overtly ideological moviemaking emerges: expensive public service announcements masquerading as art.