Contraataque also known as Counterattack is a Mexican action-thriller directed by Chava Cartas and written by Jose Ruben Escalante Mendez. It had a theatrical release internationally before it was streamed in the United States.


 

Armando (Luis Alberti) is a captain within the Mexican military whose unit specializes in battling the cartel. After he rescues Lucia (Mayra Batalla) and Carla (Frida Jiser) from being kidnapped, she reveals the location of a mass grave, allowing the unit to round up some cartel leaders. After being betrayed, Armando and his team are lost in the woods and under heavy fire from the cartel as they make their way to the US border for safety.

I do not watch a lot of films from Mexico, mainly because of my lack of access to it. That is why I was elated when I saw this thriller pop up in my Netflix suggestion feed. I immediately pressed play on a Saturday night and I was in for an adventure.

You immediately rally behind these five men as they head to a showdown. They all have hopes and dreams but are ultimately driven by a strong sense of justice. This paints a target on their back and you watch as they are hunted by a man who has a personal vendetta against them.

I appreciate how this movie told the story. It was simple but exciting. It did not rely on meaningless CGI effects or long monologues to carry the audience. Instead, it shows instead of tells, guiding you along with our five protagonists and the cartel army chasing them. It harkens back to old-school survivalist flicks with a spine-tingling plot.

If I could pinpoint one issue, it is that the pace is a bit fast. For instance, the time from the second confrontation with the cartel to the third happens very quickly. There was not a lot of time to breath between the sequences.

Outside of that, this was a solid story that is a credit to the director and writer. I think that it is a well-made action thriller with a hateful villain and true heroes you can cheer for. That is something that is missing in Hollywood, so I am glad that I found it in Mexico. You just have to know where to look for good cinema.

Bottom line, Counterattack is a solid action thriller that takes place in Mexico. As the five heroes navigate hostile terrain, you are pulled into the plot and hope that they make it out alive. 

 


 

An elite Mexican commando unit battling cartels and corruption must shoot and fight its way north — to safety in Brownsville — in the chest-thumping shoot-em-up “Counterattack.”

Nothing is made of that irony, and that’s just one of many loose threads in this loose cannon B-movie from South of the Border.

Luis Alberti is Captain Guerrero, who finishes up an afternoon of drinking and gambling with a pal by intervening when two women (Mayra Batalla and Frida Jiser) trying to report a mass grave they’ve found are hassled by cartel goons and corrupt cops.

The captain is so celebrated and intimidating that he wins the stand-off with a legion of armed mob minions and local police, and gets to just walk away after having shot a couple of bad guys — including one with a badge.

That’s the logic here. Don’t judge “how they do things in Mexico” and don’t pay too much attention to how things transpire. Try not to get too far ahead of the utterly formulaic plot and don’t sweat the layers and layers of plot lapses and genre tropes and cliches.

When’s that next shootout, compadres?

Captain Guerrero is part of a unit called Murcielagos — “bats.” The cartel leader they’re hunting (Noé Hernández) and his brother (Israel Islas) have it in for these soldiers, blaming them for killing their father. That’s why they filled a ditch with dead soldiers, which the two women — one of them on her way for an abortion — find.

The villains ambush Guerrero and his closest subordinates — nicknamed Tanque, Pollo, Toro and Combo (Leonardo Alonso, Luis Curiel, Guillermo Nava, David Calderón León) — when they’re off duty, heading north for a U.S. shopping trip.

When the army men turn the tide and wipe out their ambushers, it’s game on as they’re on foot, the bad guys’ “dogs” are in pursuit (Ishbel Baustista plays their ace tracker) and the only hope for our heroes is a “safe” extraction either near the border, or across it in Texas.

The movie sets up several promising subtexts, and all but forgets almost every one of them as we lurch from shoot-out to shoot-out, with the Murcielagos battling long odds and never missing what they aim at — unless it’s a senior bad guy, whom they wound. So he can make a speech.


 

After every firefight that the five survive, they “report,” aka “sound off” — “Combo STANDING,” “Tanque STANDING…”

The shootouts are first-rate, in that “bad guys mostly miss, good guys never do” way.

Alberti is a most charismatic lead, and Hernández does what he can with the doting dad/ranting, raving and murderous drug lord at work stereotype. The willowy Bautista was an interesting choice to play the tough broad killer/tracker “Cobra.”

But nothing here is written or directed in a way to make it memorable beyond that moment when the credits start and Netflix is trying to convince you to begin watching something else without giving you the chance to say “Not so fast.”