Just a few years ago, John Leguizamo was a New York performance artist on the fringe of the theatrical world who looked like he might develop a sideline as a movie character actor, à la Willem Dafoe. Now he's on the verge of becoming a major film actor, one who happens to have an extensive record onstage. Leguizamo brings all the qualities that lend him a peculiar edge -- his overly varnished good looks, his salesman's suavity, his hyperactive New York arrogance -- to this role as Manolo Bonilla, an arrogant cowboy reporter for a Miami-based Latino TV network.

"Crónicas" marks the first time Leguizamo has performed a principal role in Spanish (Manolo likes to ask and answer questions in English sometimes, mostly to impress the people around him with his cultural versatility) but there's no hint of self-congratulation or bogus cultural affirmation about it. Manolo sweeps into the remote jungle town of Babahoyo, where a serial rapist and killer has been preying on the area's children, intent as always on getting the story at any cost. When he stops a mob of enraged townspeople from killing a local husband and father named Vinicio Cepeda (played by the fine Mexican actor Damián Alcázar), who has just run over a kid with his pickup truck, Manolo sends a story back to Miami casting himself, as always, as a kind of populist hero amid Latin America's cruelty and corruption.

Writer-director Cordero parcels out his information with deadly precision; we already have an inkling that the kindly looking Vinicio is a little more interested in the Monster of Babahoyo than seems strictly healthy. Despite just having depicted Vinicio to the entire Spanish-speaking hemisphere as a blameless victim, Manolo begins to sniff out the deeper, uglier story -- but, slick as he is, he isn't about to share his intuition with the hapless local cops, and never imagines that some small-town perv might be capable of outsmarting him. What ensues is a classic cat-and-mouse game full of switchbacks and surprises; Leguizamo's interviews with Alcázar in the decrepit prison where Vinicio is being held will have you digging your fingernails into your armrests.

Maybe "Crónicas" is meant to be a parable about the evil power of the media, but I think that like most effective thrillers it's really about fundamental human weakness -- in this case, the desire to believe in your own goodness even when you definitely shouldn't. Cordero has a terrific cast (including Leonor Watling and José Maria Yazpik as the other members of Manolo's TV crew) and captures his grimy tropical location with an almost desperate urgency. Despite all that South American sunshine, this lean and brilliantly constructed thriller is a dark realm of secrets and lies, illuminated by TV lighting and the glitter of John Leguizamo's eyes. Those in search of life-affirming family entertainment might want to stick with Ingmar Bergman.

"Crónicas" opens July 8 in New York and Los Angeles, with a national rollout to begin July 22.

"Murderball": Boys will be boys, even with broken necks
You could argue that "Murderball," a new documentary from first-timers Dana Adam Shapiro and Henry-Alex Rubin that wowed the crowds at Sundance, is exactly the kind of nonfiction film I complain about incessantly in this space. It's closer in many ways to human-interest journalism than to traditional documentary cinema, and in fact it emerged from a feature story about the United States quadriplegic-rugby team that Shapiro wrote for Maxim. Its basic point -- that aggro-jock dudes who have suffered disabling injury or illness remain aggro-jock dudes, and possibly more so than ever -- could just as well have been made in a segment of "60 Minutes" or "Now."

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