A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Featuring:
Eric Roberts, Joaquim de Almeida, Victor Rivers
Written by:
James McManus
Directed by:
Jack Perez
Release Date:
May 14, 1998
Original Title:
La Cucaracha
Alternate Titles:
La Cucaracha - Spiel ohne Regeln
Genres:
Drama | Thriller
Ratings / Certifications:
DE: 16
Runtime: 97
A desperate writer fights for survival when the Mexican mob involves him in murder.
Walter has problems. He's an American who's recently moved to a small Mexican village where he wants to live and write, but he barely knows the language and has no money. He wants to write but has no idea how to do this and he has nothing in the US to go back to. He spends his nights in a broke down abandoned shed by the lake trying to write and he spends his days in a local tavern drinking local beer he can't afford and receiving some food on the account of the barkeeper's pity. He's truly a lost man waiting for something to happen and save him. That's when a shady man who writes epitaphs for the recently departed introduces himself. He wants Walter to do a job for him. A powerful local man committed a grave crime against his boss, a powerful shady local businessman, and he needs to die. Walter is offered 100 000 US dollars to be the triggerman. After some consideration, Walter accepts the offer, since they'll kill him if he doesn't, now that he knows their illegal plan. Besides, this money could allow him to finally ask the local girl he's been secretly in love with, but never had the gall to introduce himself to, to elope with him. The assassination attempt ends in an unexpected way, and Walter gets shot in the back by his employers who never intended to let him live with his knowledge of the assassination. However, Walter survives. Now a cripple, he plans to take vengeance. He has finally found his true purpose in life. However, fate has one more cynical and ironic twist in store for him.
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.