Armando Espitia in Heli (Outsider Pictures)

Despite its narrative shortcomings, Heli, the latest feature from Mexican director Amat Escalante (Sangre, Los Bastardos), offers a solid showcase of the filmmaker’s impressive eye. The film is sprinkled with mysterious and surprising compositions that are simultaneously thought provoking, striking, and flowing, for which Escalante won the best director award at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.

Heli begins by paralleling two potential love stories: Heli and his new wife Sabrina (Linda González), who has recently given birth to their baby; and his little sister, Estela (Andrea Vergara), and her boyfriend Beto (Juan Eduardo Palacios), a young police cadet. The story builds piece by piece, at first focusing primarily on the 12-year-old Estela and the 17-year-old Beto’s strangely sweet relationship, in which they appear to care for each other and he seems to respect her desire to wait to have sex. It all goes very horribly dark, however, when Beto steals two packs of confiscated cocaine in order to escape the tortures of his military hazing and run away with Estela. The mundane yet tranquil life initially led by Heli—in a household that includes Sabrina, Estela, and his father—is suddenly brutally interrupted, and Estela and Beto’s fantasy of a shared romantic future is brought to a bloody, violent halt.

The film mostly follows the title character’s horrific and inadvertent clash with a mercilessly violent local drug cartel. Newcomer Armando Espitia plays Heli with little flourish, steadily passing through various emotions as the largely one-dimensional script calls for them, while yet managing to capture the both resigned and ferocious impulses of an everyday man.

The series of events are nothing new. We are shown corruption in the name of drug capitalism, with several scenes of disturbing violence. We also witness the traumatization of children and how youngsters are forced to adopt violence as a way of life. The unfortunately unfilled potential for a more effective film, however, lies elsewhere.

Escalante only begins to enrich his story in the moments where he lingers on the details of the minor pleasures and fears of his characters. After all, they were going about their lives before and after the horrifying events that ensue. We are given small hints at the underlying drama of the family dynamic, particularly the tension between Heli and Sabrina, who has been refusing to have sex with him after giving birth and expressing discontent at having left her own family to live with his. The ambiguous ending signals a restoration of the family order, but the violence in which it is immersed is never quite settled.

Heli fails to offer a different side to a not unfamiliar backdrop. The scenes of extreme violence, which often inflict unease and disgust, only succeed in stirring up the false tranquility of a quiet domestic life. Honest intentions are to be found, but the forced interconnections overwhelm any kind of lasting cohesion. Most of the non-professional actors do a fine job with their simply drawn characters, though, and Vergara is especially strong in a disquieting yet straightforward performance as Estrela. What really  manages to leave a mark are Escalante’s frequently engrossing camera movements and nicely restrained, enigmatic images.