translated from Spanish: Analysis ? El Recluso, Netflix’s Mexican remake of El Marginal

If it does not reach you with the local dose of “El Marginal”, the Telemundo network was dispatched with its own reversal for Latins in the United States, adapting the story of Osvaldo ‘Pastor’ Peña (Juan Minujín) and Juan Pablo ‘Diosito’ Borges (Nicolás Furtado), in the context of La Rotunda, a maximum security prison in Reynosa (Tamaulipas), on the border of Mexico and its neighbors in the North.” El Recluso” -remake of the creation of Sebastián Ortega and Adrián Caetano – now comes to the Netflix catalog so that you can see for yourself how many similarities and differences there are between the two versions. At the outset, we scored another bean, as the crime drama is starring the Argentine (based in New York) Ignacio Serricchio, here in the shoes of Dante Pardo, who after a confusing episode where (allegedly) murdered the son of a governor, goes to stop right to the wolf’s mouth, or rather, to La Rotunda.

We soon learned that nothing is what it seems. Dante’s real name is Lázaro Mendoza, a former marine who works as a bodyguard for John Morris (Guy Ecker), a prominent American judge. It turns out that Linda (Isabella Castillo), the magistrate’s daughter, is kidnapped and, now, Mendoza is tasked with infiltrating the Mexican prison with a false identity to find out if Tavares’ gang is responsible for the abduction. Lazarus accepts the mission without being fully aware that he is entering hell itself: a place where abuse and attacks are common currency, as much as the corrupt conduct of guards who turn a blind eye to these assaults, or take care of fav pray to the most influential prisoners. In this climate of ill-treatment and different gangs that guard their territory within the penalty, Pardo will try to get information about the kidnapping of the girl and look for some ally along the way before ending up in the infirmary. Inside La Rotunda, no one knows his true identity. Outside, his brother Porfirio (Moisés Arizmendi) is the only bond with Morris.

Dante has a hard time (it doesn’t matter when you read this)

This first episode of “The Inmate” is not contained in showing us the brutality of the place and the extreme marginality of its inhabitants, as well as how difficult it is for our protagonist to adapt in his early hours as the ‘new inmate’. At the same time, and through messy flashbacks, he reconstructs the past of Lazarus – father and husband – and those previous and confusing days before entering La Rotunda.Inside the prison – the true setting of the series – everything is tinged with violence and corruption. In the courtyard, where prisoners are crowded and powers measured, and in offices, where the director is also trying to profit. The only one who seems alien to the reality of the place – even if she sees it with her own eyes – is Frida Villarreal (Ana Claudia Talancón), a social worker who works side by side with the inmates to ensure they pass (??) within the premises, and the possibility of rehabilitate when they gain freedom. Since his arrival, Frida seems quite interested in Pardo, although she is unaware of the circumstances that led him to the prison.

Brown and Villarreal, immediate connection?

“Dante Pardo is an infiltrator” reveals what is coming. Lazarus is going to have to infiltrate the most dangerous groups in La Rotunda and earn his trust if he wants to find out Linda’s whereabouts. The episode also makes it clear that this is a product well focused on Mexican audiences, recharged with idioms and idiosyncrasies that don’t always work for these payments. The filmmakers exploit the marginality to the maximum and forget about the redemption of their characters. Taking the protagonist out, the story lacks humanity or at least a well-taken one, and prefers to gloat about the violence and ‘lowness’ of this social group, rather than focusing on the crime thriller.  
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Original source in Spanish

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