A thriller set against a political background on the eve of the Cuban revolution, Hormigas en la Boca follows Martín (Eduard Fernández), a Spanish activist who after being released from jail, decides to go to Havana to retrieve his ex-girlfriend Julia (Ariadna Gil) and, most importantly, the money she left with that belonged to the cause. Once on the island, he is confronted with high-level corruption — in the persona of a cruel senator Freddy (Jorge Perugorría) — and finds himself at the center of a vast machination.

While not a political piece aimed at praising the revolution, Hormigas en la Boca offers a caustic portrait of a city where power and money are in the hands of high-class thugs with no morality.

The film focuses on the elite, with a noticeable absence of lower-class characters - except for the taxi driver and the hotel groom — but what could be seen as a serious bias is a rather subtle approach.

As the film unfolds, digging deeper into high-level corruption, we hear from conversations and the media that the uprising is getting closer, thus showing that the political situation is the result of high-level criminality — it's not a coincidence that the two morally honest figures of the story are the driver and the groom, two characters located at the lowest class level. With the recent craze about Cuban music — which lately has been replaced Brazilian bossa nova — director Mariano Barroso (In the Time of the Butterflies) also shows restraint by not falling into the Buena Vista Social Club cliché and trying to cash in on the trend by giving us a succession of postcard-type views of the exotic "traditional Cuba" — its only incarnation here is the taxi driver and there is no post-Wenders plagiarism here.

With its pre-Castro background, its gruesome bursts of violence and its plethora of gangsters, Hormigas en la Boca might vaguely be reminiscent of themes in The Godfather Part 2, which isn't really a criticism here. The old-fashioned charm of Havana is omnipresent, which gives the picture a retro vibe that fits so well in gangster movies — think The Godfather, The Cotton Club & The Untouchables. Barroso knows that what separates these films from modern gangster films is a sense of elegance and honor, which have now been replaced by a soulless urban cynicism. Another strength is that Barroso avoids morally judging his characters and when the end comes, it is clear that Martín's moral motivations were not better than any other characters'.

Enveloped in a sleek production and supported by a strong cast, Hormigas en la Boca offers an absorbing intrigue and a decent dose of commentary, thus hitting the target as a gangster film.

  Fred Thom