Wednesday, June 20, 2018

4.

Growing up in Southern California, KRCA-62 was for me (and hopefully many other people) the cheapie & sleazy Mexican tv channel with its bizarre programming and a unique selection of Mexican movies playing. Channel 62 had been the channel where I saw Herencia Diabólica and Ratas De La Ciudad. Both movies were in many ways life changing for me since those 2 were the ones that made me remember how peculiar & fascinating these 70’s, 80’s & 90’s Mexican movies are. After Herencia & Ratas, there was a 3rd movie that I remember watching with my mom and it was a life changer of sorts as well. I remember her watching this particular movie because she seemed quite into it and normally she would watch these movies briefly only because there was nothing else on and at the time we didn’t have cable tv. The movie she was watching was called Las 4 Narcas. I remember her being into it because it was a movie that featured 4 drug dealing ladies fighting against drug dealing men. These 4 ladies were presented as strong, smart and beautiful. They were not once presented as objects of lust & desire. They killed men, had a good time drinking & dancing the night away & overall they were just being badass all the time. Ellas también pueden

In Las 4 Narcas, we meet Maria (Patricia Rivera), Nuria (Edna Bolkan), Delia (Diana Golden) and Lorena (Azela Robinson). All 4 ladies are in the illegal drug trade and they're quite good at it. It makes their enemies Johnny (Rafael Goyri) and Fortunato (Eleazar Garcia Jr.) super envious. The 2 men try working with the 4 narcas—but the 4 narcas refuse to do any business with them because they know these guys are nothing but a bunch of backstabbers and generally just want control of it all. Johnny grows tiresome of going back & forth with the 4 narcas and even getting his men killed by them—so he puts out a hit on all 4 narcas. Naturally, the 4 narcas fight back hard at their assassination attempts and nothing & nobody will stop them!

Las 4 Narcas is a great action/crime flick with badass female leads that are truly into their roles. They’re so believable & so damn likable. You want these narcas to always win and sure enough that is exactly what happens in the entire duration. Now the plot does loosely follow the corrido its based on with various scenes that are in the song itself. Mostly the parts with them clubbing and shouting where they're from and that scene is so great and Azela Robison is the best in it. You can tell she’s definitely having some drinks & feeling like a badass that she is. 

Las 4 Narcas is pretty low-budget of course and it seems the movie was filmed in 3-4 locations that are clearly not far from each other. Los Pumas Del Norte—the band that made the narcocorrido popular—star in the movie as themselves and their acting skills are far from perfect, but they at least try and mostly play music anyway. They do however get in the final battle of the movie and that was very interesting to see. Los Pumas were clearly loyal to the 4 narcas. Patricia Rivera was my favorite Narca in the movie since she's such an amazing actress. Her playing the leader Maria was perfect since she definitely looks like the leading type. Edna Bolkan was the 2nd in command and she was great as well and so dreamy looking too (!!).

There's plenty of other movies with narcas in them from around the late 90's to early 2000's—but I feel Las 4 Narcas is the superior one since it stars the main actresses that were in most of these narca movies. It's the defining one really since it has badass ladies with guns, drugs, & power. They win and the men always lose.


I took the liberty of translating the 4 Narcas corrido to English so you can understand how awesome this song is. Listen to the song in the first clip below.

At a club in San Jose, 4 ladies arrived.
I don't know if it's true but they say they're narcas..
with boots & hats, they were beautiful in person..
They entered The Tropicana, a famous nightclub and started to drink only imported tequila.
They requested the bands to only play only the badass songs.
the nightclub was packed,
not one more soul could fit inside.
It was Los Pumas Del Norte who were playing that night,
They were all having a good time at their reserved table.

They've been seen in San Francisco,
Los Angeles & Tijuana,
Stockton & Sacramento,
Reno, Nevada as well.
They're always at nightclub to nightclub,
spending their good cash.

One of them stood up & shouted "Hooray Chihuahua!"
The other was from Sinaloa,
The third is from Michoacan,
the fourth is from Jalisco,
She shouted it so proudly.

They're always driving in 2 vehicles,
Brand new & customized..
Inside are their machine guns,
pistols & even grenades.
The police have seen them but they never tell them a thing.

To me, The 4 Narcas are undercover working for the DEA,
looking for "La Colombiana" at all the nightclubs and the private parties.

Be careful with beautiful women,
the more beautiful they are, the more dangerous they are.
So many have lost their heads over them.