{"id":6972,"date":"2024-10-25T11:29:18","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6972"},"modified":"2024-10-25T11:29:18","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:29:18","slug":"midnight-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/25\/midnight-family\/","title":{"rendered":"Midnight Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Midnight Family <\/strong>(2019)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 1091 Media\/Documentary\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 81 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA rating (thematic elements, language, images of injuries)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Luke Lorentzen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Luke Lorentzen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Leonardo Heiblum, Jacobo Lieberman, Alexis Ruiz and Andres Sanchez\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Luke Lorentzen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 10, 2020 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Fer Ochoa, Juan Ochoa, Josue Ochoa.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Spoken in Spanish w\/English subtitles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019ve decided to take a cue from Pauline Kael, the outspoken New Yorker film critic and subject of a recent documentary, in my review of Midnight Family<\/strong>. I\u2019m going to come right out and say exactly what I think of it. I didn\u2019t like it. Even though it\u2019s about a subject of interest, it failed to engage me. For the record, Luke Lorentzen\u2019s documentary centers on a family that operates a private ambulance in Mexico City. The Ochoas drive around at night looking for patients to take to area hospitals, a service for which they expect to be paid on the spot. Given that the government provides only 45 ambulances in a city with nine million people, privately owned ambulances are big business. Whenever a call for help comes over the radio, they race each other on the streets Fast & Furious-style in order to be the first on the scene.<\/p>\n

\u00a0If the American health care system needs fixing, we at least have it better than our neighbors across the border. In Mexico, it\u2019s just about broken beyond repair. When somebody needs emergency care, they have to wait awhile for help to show up. When a private ambulance finally shows up, the cops on the scene demand bribes before they allow the EMTs to render aid and transport the patient. They check if all the paperwork and licenses are in order. They insist they must wait a mandatory 30 minutes to see if a government ambulance shows up before the patient can be moved. They threaten the EMTs with arrest if they resist. Of course, it all stops once money changes hands.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The problems don\u2019t stop there. Mexico City is what you call economically depressed. Most of the Ochoas\u2019 patients can\u2019t or won\u2019t pay. They have no money. A lot of times, there\u2019s no space at the one hospital that takes charity cases meaning that they have to take them to a private hospital that the patient or his\/her family can\u2019t afford. Then once they\u2019ve dropped off the patient, that\u2019s when they learn they\u2019re being stiffed yet again. At best, the Ochoas eke out a meager living.<\/p>\n

\u00a0While all of these are valid points, Midnight Family<\/strong> keeps repeating them. It\u2019s a rather redundant movie. It also gives us a lot of uninteresting scenes of family drama like father Fer\u2019s depressed state, older son Juan worrying about their finances and riding little brother Josue about attending school. We also get scenes of Juan describing their cases to his girlfriend over his phone. The film is unclear on how it feels about the Ochoas. Are they good people or profiteers taking advantage of a broken system and people at their most vulnerable? Certainly there are many non-altruistic folks among the ranks. Lorentzen gets the tone all wrong too. A movie about ambulance drivers racing against the clock to get their patients to the hospital in the nick of time should have a sense of urgency to it. Although I didn\u2019t much care for it, Martin Scorsese\u2019s Bringing Out the Dead got it right. It\u2019s a jittery, over-caffeinated piece that puts the viewer right in the passenger seat. It does, however, get right the look and feel of a big city after dark. I\u2019ll give it that much.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Even at a scant 81 minutes, Midnight Family<\/strong> feels stretched out. It would work better as a documentary short subject. Now here\u2019s how I would have done it. I\u2019d open with a brief into to the Ochoa family via expository conversation. After a few minutes, a call comes over the radio about a person injured in a four-story fall from an apartment building (one of the cases in the movie). The Ochoas race to the scene trying to maneuver ahead of other private ambulances. They make it to the scene first where Fer treats the patient while Juan deals with the corrupt cop. At one point, they cuff him and throw him in the back of their car until he agrees to pay them off. They finally get on their way only to find that there\u2019s no space available at the public hospital. They can\u2019t even get into the parking lot. They manage to get the patient\u2019s family to agree to a private hospital. When they finally arrive, the patient is DOA. Juan goes over to the family and offers up a few words of condolences before telling them they need to settle their bill right now. Of course, they can\u2019t pay. They argue a bit before Juan walks off in defeat. Outside, Fer and Josue are cleaning and organizing the ambulance. The family gets in and drives off with the radio alerting them to another person in need of medical care. The end credits roll as they drive down the nighttime road. Normally, I\u2019m not one to tell a filmmaker how to do his\/her job. In this case, I\u2019ll make an exception as I see a potentially exceptional short film.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I wouldn\u2019t characterize Midnight Family<\/strong> as a bad movie; it\u2019s merely an unsatisfying one. It leaves a lot to be desired. As I indicated in the previous paragraph, there\u2019s a great movie to be made on this subject. Brevity would certainly get the point across more efficiently and effectively. But that\u2019s just my opinion. Well, it\u2019s my job, isn\u2019t it?\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Midnight Family (2019)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 1091 Media\/Documentary\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 81 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA rating (thematic elements, language, images of injuries)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Luke Lorentzen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Luke Lorentzen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Leonardo Heiblum, Jacobo Lieberman, Alexis Ruiz and Andres Sanchez\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Luke Lorentzen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 10, 2020 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Fer Ochoa, Juan Ochoa, Josue Ochoa.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Spoken in Spanish w\/English subtitles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7260,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-documentary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Midnight-Family-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6972"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7262,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6972\/revisions\/7262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}