Chacaleria

Forget the postcards and get ready for a giant billboard from the edge with the dynamite Panamanian crime thriller Chacaleria, the feature debut by writer/director Gurnir Singh. We are whisked back to those giddy days of the pandemic shutdown, where plucky young go-getter Antonia (Mayra Hurley) watches all the employment opportunities she has built up disappear. She invested a lot of money into buying a drone to for photography and video projects, but the Panama Tourism Board is refusing to pay her for her work. Worse of all, thanks to a special dash of anti-partying mandates by the Panamanian government, she has to go through it sober.

“…Antonia can use her drone to deliver bottles of booze high above the city…”

To help stop the spread of COVID, all alcohol sales were banned during the quarantine. Feeling the wolf at the door, Antonia digs deep into social media and manages to reach Kenny Alco (Juliette Boy), the notorious online bootlegger. Alco is currently closed for business, as her delivery guy is rotting in a Panamanian jail. Antonia has a solution, as she can use her drone to deliver bottles of booze high above the city. This keeps the illegal liquor trade out of reach of the corrupt police force, like officer Ronnie (Miguel Angel Oyola) and his partner Alejandro (Elmis Castillo). Ronnie used to be straight and narrow, much to the chagrin of his bribe-loving boss Major De La Rosa (Andres Poveda). However, Ronny’s stepdaughter (Ivanna Sosa) is studying at MIT in the states and has huge tuition bills. Then Ronny gets some even worse news, which drives him to reassess the good that all his principles are doing him. Ronny’s descent into corruption is on a collision course with Antonia’s ascent in the pandemic underworld, and it is going to get ugly. 

Chacaleria is further proof of the modern variations of “you can’t judge a book by its cover.” If this were a decade or so ago, the cover of this movie would be its poster, which is solid black with only a dictionary definition in white script for what Chacaleria means. The subtitle translation suggests it is the Panamanian slang for the adjective “ghetto”, with the American version being “sketchy” and the Canadian version being “greasy.” No huge visual impact, but pretty enticing once you get to some reading.