Mexico's highest grossing film of 2003, Hugo Rodriguez' "Nicotina" is a stylized crime caper with a handsome cast, a few laughs, and big gaping hole where its heart should be.
Ultracute Diego Luna, one of the two sex-crazed adolescents in "Y Tu Mama Tambien," plays a leering hacker who is drawn into an escalating series of coincidences when a diamond deal goes awry, together with a Russian mobster (Norman Sotolongo), a heartbroken pharmacist (Carmen Madrid), two bickering gangsters (Lucas Crespi and Jesus Ochoa), and a greedy barber's wife (Rosa Maria Bianchi.) Come to think of it, everybody in "Nicotina" is greedy (and there's probably an intended parallel to the addictive substance of the title.)
But nobody is likeable, and that means everybody is expendable. Suffused with the cynicism Guy Ritchie pioneered in "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels," "Nicotina" is the kind of movie where the real hero is the screenwriter: since all the characters are despicable, you're simply invited to admire the cleverness with which the plot unfolds. Swiss bank accounts are hacked, bullets fired, diamonds hidden, and details that were skillfully planted early on gain importance later. Everybody meets their doom with poetic justice and bitter irony, and we go home shrugging our shoulders.
