1989 film
Tropical Snow is a 1988 American drama film written and directed by Ciro Durán and starring David Carradine, Madeleine Stowe, and Jsu Garcia (credited as "Nick Corri"). It was Durán's "first scripted, English-language feature", and also Tim Allen's film debut (with a cameo as a baggage handler).[1]
Plot
Tavo (Jsu Garcia) and Marina (Madeleine Stowe) live in poverty in Bogotá and desire a better life in New York.[2] Such a move is an expense neither can afford. Tavo is almost killed while attempting to pickpocket, and Marina refuses to enter a life of prostitution. Marina works in a gentlemen's lounge but leaves after Tavo becomes jealous.
The two are offered the chance to move to the United States on the condition they smuggle cocaine into John F. Kennedy International by Oska (David Carradine), a local drug peddler. Tavo eventually dies from a drug overdose after failing to pass the cocaine. Marina survives, passing the cocaine in custody before spending time in a United States prison and then returning to Colombia.[3]
Reception
Tropical Snow was described by Bill Kelley of the Sun Sentinel as "that bleakest of low-budget entities – an exploitation B-movie with a social conscience".[4] Kelley criticized the direction and acting, stating both were done with the "sort of solemn incompetence that only the truly untalented can achieve", noting that even the explicit love scenes had a "sad, desperate quality". While praising Carradine's performance, he described the remaining cast as "unconvincing" and concluded by calling the film "boring".[4]
In rating the film one star out of five, Michael Mills of the Palm Beach Post stated that "despite its poetic title, Tropical Snow is glum and prosaic".[5] The same review did praise the film's cinematography, observing it "gives everything, even the hillside shanty towns, a tarnished glow".[5] The movie was noted as "timely" given the attempts by Colombia to pursue drug lords at the time the film was made.[6]
Juan Coto of the Miami Herald gave the film two and a half stars out of five, praising the "strong" performances by Garcia and Stowe. The performance of Carradine was also praised, with Coto opining it was "surprisingly genteel" and "perhaps the kindest drug dealer ever put on screen".[2] He finalized the review as "topical" but "sometimes as simplistic as the metaphor in [the] title".[2] Critic Steven Puchalski also sees Tropical Snow as a "gritty potboiler": "Maintaining a serious tone throughout, [Durán] captures the poverty and despair of his [Colombian] home turf, while demonstrating how prostitution, crime and drugs could seem like the only way to succeed". The film still made concession to commercialism, as with "scattered moments of overheated drama and lots of gratuitous nudity from both Stowe and Corri".[1]
