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Manny Perez as Luisito in LA SOGA, a film directed by Josh Crook. Courtesy 7-57 Releasing. All rights reserved.

La Soga (2009/2010)

Also Known As: The Butcher's Son

Opened: 08/13/2010 Limited

Trailer: Click for trailer

Websites: Home, Facebook

Genre: Crime Drama

Rated: Unrated

Synopsis

La Soga is an edgy, action-packed thriller set in the Dominican Republic and New York City. The film follows the personal journey of Luisito a.k.a. "La Soga," the son of a butcher turned government killer, who risks everything for justice. Inspired by true events, La Soga depicts corruption, brutality and one man's struggle to find redemption.

In a poor neighborhood in the Dominican Republic where the streets are run by deported drug dealers, a modest butcher struggles to raise his sensitive ten year old son, Luisito. When Luisito witnesses the brutal murder of his father by a vicious criminal named Rafa (Paul Calderon), his life is forever altered.

Twenty years later, Luisito (Manny Perez) works for General Colon (Juan Fernandez), the head of the Dominican secret police. Colon preys on the impressionable Luisito's desire for revenge and transforms him into a heartless killer.

Into Luisito's world enters Jenny (Denise Quinones), a childhood sweetheart who left for New York shortly before Luisito's family tragedy. Unaware of his occupation, Jenny falls for the seemingly innocent Luisito. As Luisito investigates the General and unearths the greatest betrayal of all, he must find his own kind of justice, while dealing with the consequences of his own actions.

Director's Statement

In a way, this is my first feature film. Although, my brother, Jeff Crook, and I have directed six feature films together and produced half a dozen more, I had never done it alone. I never realized how personal the experience becomes when you create from your own individual imagination. La Soga was a transformational experience, and I am a different person because of it.

The first question I usually get about La Soga is "What is a non-Spanish speaking American director from Brooklyn, doing directing a Spanish language film in the Dominican Republic?" This is how it happened.

In 2006, Manny Perez told me about a script that he was writing about the D.R. It was the country he was born in, lived in until he was 11, and still visits often to see his family. The first thing he described to me was a scene about a 10-year-old kid killing a 150lb pig. As he described the characters, the story, and the culture (all inspired by true events), I realized that this was not just an ordinary screenplay. Manny had created an inspired, personal tale of a world he knew intimately. I asked him for the script, and although my brother and I were directing a film at the time, I read it that night -- and was hooked. I asked Manny if he would consider me as a director, and he agreed. My guess was: he was searching for an outsider to direct so that the universality of the story wouldn't get lost. The voice he brought to the page was from his soul and he wanted to share it with the world.

For the next two years we dedicated ourselves to realizing a film that was true to Manny's original vision. There were producers that wanted us to shoot in English, others wanted us to shoot outside the D.R. and offered us significant budgets to do so. But we turned them down and made the movie for less money, in Manny's hometown, in the mountains outside of Santiago, and in Spanish, because ultimately, this was a labor of love. I wanted it to be, first and foremost, embraced by Dominicans. I surrounded myself with the people and the culture and learned as much as I could about the island. This experience of immersion was one of the most profound experiences of my life.

In the film we follow a lost, hollowed-out shell of a man. He is a professional killer searching for the soul he lost a long time ago. I tried to bring to life that space we all live in when we were innocent, when we knew who we were intuitively. The world changes all of us and while this is inevitable, we often feel a longing for that innocence which was lost along the way.

La Soga takes place mostly in the neighborhoods outside of Santiago, but La Soga, the man, searches for his soul in a place we can all relate to.

-- Josh Crook

The Making of La Soga

Manny Perez was born and raised in a small town called Baitoa in a rural area outside of Santiago, in The Dominican Republic. At the age of 11, Manny and his family moved to the United States. It was during one of his summer vacations with his father back in his hometown, when Manny discovered that living in the States for a while, changed his perspective, and he started thinking about his home country in a new way.

Upon arriving in Baitoa one summer, he was greeted by a small pig that Manny adopted as a pet. The day before he and his father where getting ready to return to the States, he woke up to what sounded like a child screaming. Manny got up and ran outside to find the local butcher slaughtering the pig. He ran to his Uncle who told him the pig was being killed for his going away party. This would be completely normal for a child living in the D.R. but like nearly everyone in the United States, Manny had gotten used to eating meat from the grocery store, so hearing his pet getting killed made quite an impression.

During another summer vacation, he met up with one of his childhood friends who had been deported from the US to D.R. during the high-crime era of the 1980s. He and Manny chatted for a bit, when all of a sudden a car pulled up into the town and Manny's friend ran and hid. The car had about 50 bullet holes in it. His friend's mother was pleading with the man to spare her son, but he pushed her aside, walked inside the house, and found Manny's friend hidden under his bed. He pulled him into the middle of the town and without saying one word, shot him in the head. He then tied him up and drove him around the town to say "this will happen to you if you are a bad boy in this country."

Manny's friend was wanted for bank robberies, and had three strikes against him after having been deported. He felt he was above the law and could get away with anything in a country where the police don't get paid and sometimes can't afford to put bullets in their guns. These two events were the seeds of La Soga.

Later, Manny was working as an actor on a film that Josh and Jeff Crook were directing. They were discussing their favorite films such as City of God and Manny mentioned his script for La Soga. The Crook Brothers went home and read the script and the next day they committed to getting the money to shoot the film.

In spite of the unsafe conditions, the spiders, the bad roads, the blackouts, and the general lack of amenities they were used to in New York, they were received with amazing hospitality by nearly everyone they met. The people of Baitoa made this film possible. Everyday people showed up on set to help, and Manny and Josh are forever in their debt.