Movie · 2000 · Drama, Thriller · 2h 34m · R · Spanish
Curator score: 9.1/10 (529.4K ratings)
Love. Betrayal. Death.
Overview
A fatalistic car crash in Mexico city sets off a chain of events in the lives of three people: a supermodel, a young man wanting to run off with his sister-in-law, and a homeless man.
Ratings
Curator score: 9.1/10
IMDb: 8.0/10
Letterboxd: 4.18/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 93%
Metacritic: 83
TMDB: 7.6/10
Director
Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Production
Altavista Films, Zeta Film
Cast
Emilio Echevarría, Gael García Bernal, Vanessa Bauche, Goya Toledo, Álvaro Guerrero, Jorge Salinas, Marco Pérez, Rodrigo Murray, Humberto Busto, Gerardo Campbell, Rosa María Bianchi, Dunia Saldívar, Adriana Barraza, José Sefami, Lourdes Echevarría, Laura Almela, Gustavo Sánchez Parra, Dagoberto Gama, Rodrigo Ostap, Patricio Castillo
Curator Review
Verdict
A bruising, propulsive ensemble tragedy that fuses crime, class tension, and emotional wreckage into one of the defining films of modern Mexican cinema. It’s messy in the best way: urgent, humane, and devastating, with a structure that keeps tightening the screws until the final impact lands hard.
Best for
Viewers who like interlocking stories and fatalistic crime dramas
Fans of gritty, emotionally intense filmmaking
People interested in contemporary Mexican cinema and urban social realism
Anyone drawn to films where violence and tenderness coexist
Skip if
You want a light or uplifting watch
You dislike nonlinear storytelling or shifting perspectives
Graphic cruelty toward animals or harsh violence is a dealbreaker
You prefer tidy resolutions and clear moral boundaries
Overview
Amores Perros is a collision movie in the deepest sense: cars, lives, classes, and private grief all slam into one another and keep reverberating. Alejandro G. Iñárritu turns a single crash into a portrait of Mexico City as a place where love, ambition, desperation, and survival are all tangled together. The film is rough-edged, but that roughness is part of its force.
Worth noting
What makes it endure is how alive it feels in the moment. The performances are raw, the camera is restless, and the editing gives each story its own pulse while still making the whole feel like one wound. It’s a film about people making terrible choices for understandable reasons, and about how quickly dignity can be stripped away.
Bottom line
The dog motif is not just provocation; it’s the film’s moral wiring. Loyalty, cruelty, instinct, and abandonment echo through every strand of the story. By the end, it feels less like a puzzle solved than a city’s pain briefly made visible.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Laura (5★) · 3446 likes
gael garcía bernal owns my soul
Alejandro Trejo (5★) · 2954 likes
"Decía mi abuela: Que si quieres hacer reír a Dios, cuéntale tus planes."
La sangre mexicana se siente en cada momento.
Una película tan sucia, tan cruda, tan angustiosa pero sobretodo tan humana, que llega a pegar en el corazoncito.
Con una narración impecable, una dirección de enfoque inquieta que la hace efectiva, y un soundtrack que te dan ganas de llorar.
Contada mediante personajes complejos en busca de una liberación personal, hasta que descubren que sus pecados son más… more
cocoimbrosciano (4★) · 2681 likes
Mexican's Pulp Fiction.
Marcissus (4★) · 1913 likes
There is a reason I will never watch Marley and Me and it is not Owen Wilson. It is because I refuse to subject myself to dogs dying, I know exactly how that film is going to end and I will have no part in it. The tricky buggers behind this film weren't so see-through, making a film that not only portrays cruelty and despair of human life, but reflected through canine life too. As soon as ''no dogs were… more There is a reason I will never watch Marley and Me and it is not Owen Wilson. It is because I refuse to subject myself to dogs dying, I know exactly how that film is going to end and I will have no part in it. The tricky buggers behind this film weren't so see-through, making a film that not only portrays cruelty and despair of human life, but reflected through canine life too. As soon as ''no dogs were… more
Luca (3.5★) · 1903 likes
Part one: “Wow, this is pretty great”
Part two: “Wow, this is really okay”
Part three: “Wow, part one was really good, huh?”
This makes me so mad that Crash won best picture