chax-3 Review of Looking for Palladin

Looking for Palladin (2008)

Beautiful class of values set in a beautiful place

[10/10 · 17 June 2011]

Set in Antigua, Guatemala, where a young and brash Hollywood agent goes to find a long-away-from-Hollywood but prized actor, this movie tells of stories of parents and lost childhood, of the desire to live the life one chooses rather than the life others want of us, and along the way celebrates food and love. I had never heard of this movie, and rented it on impulse at our local independent rental store, Casa Video. I found myself taken where the best of movies take one, out of my world, to another place entirely. This is gloriously filmed as the sun shines on the streets of Antigua, as the actor turned cook spices his food not always according to customer taste, and as a young man comes to understand his elders and his past, and possibly to begin to determine his own identity in a way he has not done in the past.