MOVIE REVIEW : Chilean Politics Add Tart, Timely Edge to ‘100 Pesos’

Gustavo Graef-Marino’s crack suspense thriller “Johnny 100 Pesos” finds 17-year-old Johnny (Mexican superstar Armando Araiza) entering a nondescript downtown Santiago apartment building and taking an elevator to the most unobtrusive video store imaginable--the kind where the clerk checks out the customer through a peephole before letting him or her in.

The shop, not surprisingly, is a front--for an illegal currency exchange. Johnny is serving as the advance man for a quartet of seasoned criminals to follow. The robbery attempt swiftly goes awry with hostages taken and then a standoff with the cops.

Inspired by an actual November, 1990, incident, Graef-Marino proceeds in a classical suspense fashion--crisp, terse, straight-ahead, developing terrific tension, shrewd observation of character under pressure, a sure way with actors and an eye for telling, sometimes humorous detail.

The four older crooks are hard cases, the kind who think of swallowing valuables to make life easier for them in prison in case they can’t make a getaway. Johnny is another matter: a nice kid, poor and fatherless, who has taken a step in the wrong direction and who develops a genuine if volatile connection with the beautiful, worldly secretary (Patricia Rivera) of the nerdy guy running the illegal operation. These two become the focal characters, involving us in their fates, hoping that they survive and that Johnny, against escalating odds, can somehow straighten out his life.

Like Sidney Lumet in “Dog Day Afternoon,” Graef-Marino deftly satirizes media excesses that typically surround hostage standoffs. In this instance, a slick TV reporter (Sergio Hernandez) shamelessly exploits Johnny’s mother, and he’s such a master at his dirty work you really have to be impressed, no matter how much you deplore his tactics.

While “Johnny 100 Pesos” plays like a superior Hollywood movie, its time and place give it unique dimension and significance. For this botched robbery takes place just as democracy has been restored to Chile, and as a result the film acquires a whole new level of meaning as authorities struggle with damage control, desperate to prevent the incident from giving Chile a black eye in the world media. Graef-Marino, who effortlessly alternates between the tragic and the comic, observes these bureaucratic machinations with considerable dark humor, but takes his leave with an expression of compassion for that 17-year-old who has reached such a dangerous crossroads.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: This Spanish-language film has some violence, some language and some rough sex, none of which is excessive but is inappropriate for children.

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‘Johnny 100 Pesos’

Armando Araiza: Johnny

Patricia Rivera: Gloria

Sergio Hernandez: the Journalist

Willy Semlery: Freddy, leader of the gang

An I.R.S. Filmes release of a Quality Films presentation. Co-writer/producer/director Gustavo Graef-Marino. Cinematographer Jose Luis Arredondo. Editor Danielle Fillios. Music Andres Pollak. Production designer Juan Carlos Castillo. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

* At the Westside Pavilion, 10800 Pico Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 475-0202; Los Feliz 3, 1822 N. Vermont, Hollywood, (213) 664-2169; Town Center 4, Bristol at Anton, Cosa Mesa, (714) 751-4184.