A Mexican masterwork that blends novel-like storytelling, surreal sensuality, and revenge psychology into a brilliant western noir package, Ismael Rodriguez’s Los hermanos Del Hierro (US: My Son, the Hero) creates a mythological ethos around the story of two brothers dealing with the emotional toll of their father’s murder many years after the crime. Featuring some familiar noir names like Pedro Armendáriz, David Silva, Arturo de Córdova (as the voiceover narrator), and director Emilio Fernández (here in an acting role), the film stars Antonio Aguilar and Julio Alemán as brothers Reynaldo and Martin, respectively, who have dealt with their revenge instincts differently, Reynaldo with restraint and the younger Martin with near psychopathy. Egged on by their long-grieving mother (Columba Domínguez), Martin not only tracks down his dad’s killer and pumps him full of lead, but, having demonstrated his marksmanship and bloodlust, starts killing men both for hire and for leisure, often while hearing in his head the childhood song he was singing the moment of his father’s death. The more rational Reynaldo, on the other hand, attempts to modulate his brother’s rage, which becomes more difficult after Martin marries the beautiful Jacinta Cárdenas (Patricia Conde), with whom Reynaldo also has been in love (the cow milking scene between them is explicitly erotic). The cinematic craftsmanship on display here is nothing short of glorious, Rodriguez and team incorporating layers of shadows (much of the film takes place at night), deep focus, mirror reflections, extreme close-ups of tense and sweaty faces, low angles, high angles, and a magnificent, prolonged overhead shot of an old woman’s mental breakdown. Add to all this an inventive score and constant use of often bizarre sound effects to surround the action on screen as if we, the viewer, are inside the characters’ heads. The whole film is a feast for the senses: note, for example, the wedding scene during which the camera floats from one disembodied set of hands to the next to the next, or the morphing of a dead body on the bed into a lovemaking session and back to the body again.