Kiltro (2006) Movie Review, Trailer, Film Still and Poster

Chile 2006
Director: Ernesto Díaz Espinoza
Cast: Marko Zaror, Caterina Jadresic, Man Soo Yoon, Miguel Angel De Luca, Roberto Avendano, Luis Alarcón
Rating:
Language: Spanish, Korean
Release Date: 2006 (Chile); 15 July 2007 (Canada)
Running Time: 1 hour 37 minutes 59 seconds

The Movie Review

Kiltro film still 1


KILTRO
Storyline:
Cast:
Ending:
Overall:

I'm positive that most of you moviegoers already very familiar with names like Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, Van Damme, Jacky Chan or Rick Gracie. But do you know the name "Marko Zaror?" Well, perhaps those of you who live in South America, and especially in Chile, would say "Yeah, of course". That's right, Marko Zaror is a kick-ass Latin action star. The one that's even nicknamed "The Latin Dragon". This movie is certainly headlined by this burly dude, who has also starred as stuntman for Dwayne-The Rock-Johnson in The Rundown (2003). But will the movie live up to expectation, let's have a look shall we...

Kiltro's story revolves around a young guy named Zami (Marko Zaror) who is enamored to a Korean Girl named Kim (Caterina Jadresic) which seems to be hopeless. Why? Because Kim's father is a strict Tae kwon do master who despises Zami's way of live. And on the other hand, Zami is the leader of the local gang called Kiltro. Zami is a good guy actually, he's just seem a bit lost with his own personality. One day, a highly skilled man rams into Kim's father's dojo and even manages to hurt Kim's father and even Zami himself. Zami sees this as a chance to win Kim's heart for good, and so he embarks upon a vengeance quest. But on the way, Zami will learn more about himself and the one that is even deeper than his love for Kim.

This action flick is actually a martial arts flick. Now I'm putting this fact beforehand, because if you expect to see some explosion created with big budget by pyrotechies, well, you're not gonna get it. But instead, Kiltro is an old-school kick-ass punch/kick/throw action movie. And being one, Kiltro could in fact stand up among the rest of the genre, although...not too tall.

Most of movies fall to this subgenre have absolute simple storyline, even cheesy. But Ernesto Díaz Espinoza, who also written and edited Kiltro, put a different perspective in the script. The bad guys are not entirely bad and the good are not entirely innocent. You will kinda root for the bad guys as well. And Kiltro spends quite amount of minutes to build characters, thus make the audience feel more involved emotionally. Yes, it's an action movie which also quite fat in the romance department. But that's not to say that Kiltro is completely lame. Once the time hits half an hour, things start to get hard and bloody. Even though the total action scenes are fairly far separated.

Acting quality in this type of film is not the utmost important, it's the martial arts skill, and for that Marko is anything but a miscast. He is a big guy, but he moves fast, runs fast and kick-ass. Caterina is, of course, the eye candy and she is gracing the screen with her womanhood amidst the boys-stuff violence. And even though you will not see her give it "all out", still I'm sure most of you will simply enjoy the looks of her. Besides, you got to see a belly dance, now we all know how awesome that is, right? However, one person that I think is really cool is the main villain Miguel Angel De Luca (as Max Kalba). He's bad, he's got style and he's got a perfect reason to do bad, bad things.

From the technical aspects, Kiltro is nicely edited and nicely shot. Ernesto knows how to set the mood in almost every scene, the camerawork nicely shows what needs to be shown (or boasted) without forgetting the artistic value of it.

And boy, does Ernesto has a sense of humour. He makes a twist in the middle of the movie, one that makes you will instantly chuckle. It's a twist really. And not just one, there is another twist but this time it's literally twisted, hmmm quite gory for an action movie, a scene involving Kim's father. Unfortunately, this twist serves only a shock value.

Kiltro still could not evade the big blow of flaw. The biggest flaw, and the one that makes everything good mentioned above feels unimportant, is the action itself. The big final fight is a bore, and the fight between Zami and the gang ends too fast. Not to mention that the blood is vividly CGI-ed.

The bottom line is, Kiltro is not a movie to be taken with in-depth thinking. The pace almost never drags, and it amuses you at times. However, it may not satisfy the action-seeking fans, especially the ones that hoping for some jam-packed full of fist-exchanged among the actors. No, no, no, it just thickens the martial arts movie vocabulary, and familiarizes the international audience more with The Latin Dragon. Kiltro is worth a rent, but if you fancy yourself as a martial arts film completists, than Kiltro is the one that you should snatch.