REVIEW: DVD Release: Backyard

Film: Backyard
Release date: 27th December 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 117 mins
Director: Carlos Carrera
Starring: Ana de la Reguera, Asur Zagada, Marco Perez, Joaquin Cosio, Alejandro Calva
Genre: Crime/Drama/Mystery/Thriller
Studio: Scanbox
Format: DVD
Country: Mexico

Backyard is a fictionalised version of events that actually occurred in a small Mexican/American border known as Ciudad Juarez. The film covers similar ground to The Virgin Of Juarez and the better known Bordertown. In Backyard, though, Director Carlos Carrrera attempts to take a grittier, more realistic approach to telling the story.

Juarez is one of many Mexican border cities sustained by American-owned factories, or ‘maquiladoras’, that sprang up on the Mexican side of the border after the NAFTA agreement went into effect. Populated by blue collar and migrant workers, corruption has invaded every level of society, from indolent municipal executives to casual labourers who lack the intelligence to benefit from their skills and work ethic, and merely support the one sided way of life. Women are on the bottom rung, subjugated by all, including themselves, but especially by significant others and guardians gripped by all sorts of appetites.

In a stereotypically corrupt local system, one police officer, Blanca Bravo (played with a serious intensity by Ana de la Reguera) challenges the status quo. A system which tolerates and ignores the routine misogynistic beating and murders of young women.

As the story unravels, we see Blanca’s crusade for justice slowly deteriorate into a thirst for vengeance, as she faces up to the maddeningly low priority the system has given to solving and stopping these crimes…


Backyard is a strange film. The ‘true story’ tag always ensures films are viewed perhaps that little more critically and, at times, it just doesn’t stand up to the levels of scrutiny applied. There are so many inconsistencies in quality that it beggars belief.

There are some genuinely ingenious, if obvious, touches - Carrera’s apparent dismay at the continual Americanisation of the border towns manifests itself through the ‘Gringoismo’ of the antagonists. Many of the films most heinous characters speak English and are of a markedly lighter complexion to the rest of the cast. One particular scene, which shows a young girl strangled to death during penetration to induce a change in vaginal pressure (an act portrayed as apparently widespread and common) is a truly gut wrenching and heartbreaking moment.

Unfortunately, while some scenes are tremendously evocative, and play as a genuine reminder that the real world can be just as evil and terrifying as any fictitious one, the remainder of the film’s conscience is shouted down. Drowned out by inane dialogue, contrived essays at violence-threatening tension, and a sour desert-sepia colour scheme that seems better suited to lower-echelon, late night TV-crime melodramas. Bravo’s superior’s assertion that "women make good nurses and bad cops!" is as cheesy and lazy a line as you’ll find in a film this year.

This inconsistency filters through every aspect of the film. While many of the victims are portrayed as well rounded three-dimensional characters, too many are shallow ‘Tex Mex’ caricatures. While Reguera’s performance is excellent, the path her character follows is too contrived and well trodden. Barrera may be on record as saying that Backyard is not entertainment, but he would be hard pushed to deny that some of the major aspects of the film - Jimmy Smits’ chewing scenery, or even An de la Reguera herself (her beautiful but determined police woman would fit right in with many of today’s police procedurals - CSI, Law & Order) are lifted straight from the ‘Big Book’ of Hollywood clichés.

Backyard is a film that could have been so much more than it is. While it times persuasively, and sensitively highlights the ignored plight of many young Mexican women ensnared in a chronic and sometimes terminal cycle of hard labour and machismo battering, the potentially thousands of Juarez victims deserve more than cartoonish stereotypes.


While it’s hard to argue with Ana de la Reguera’s performance, one can’t help wondering if this film would have benefited from a heroine that didn’t take makeup and modelling classes while attending police academy. An important story told badly. PD