Based on the history of the Puccio clan in Argentina, this Mexican fiction, full of clichés, only stands out for its excellent setting
1985. Court of Justice of the State of Jalisco. Andrés Greco (Manuel Masalva) is handcuffed. Once again, he faces an interrogation, but avoids saying a peep. Led to the dungeon by two policemen, the young man manages to escape and jumps into the void before the look of horror from his sisters. From his head, blood flows, although he does not seem to have died.
In this forceful way begins ‘The secret of the Greco family’, a Mexican fiction that has just landed on Netflix and is based on another Argentine series, ‘Historia de un clan’, which in turn was inspired by the real history of the clan Puccio, a family that hid behind a public limited company and owned a large house on the outskirts of the big city where they armed all kinds of criminal acts, mostly kidnappings and extortion of other wealthy people, while from the outside they continued to show an idyllic image.
That’s what ‘El secreto de la familia Greco’ is about, although the fiction, vulgar and without chicha, seems to focus more on the criminal act and less on the obstacles that the clan must overcome to project that good image. The action goes back to 1982. Andrés is a promising polo player, who has already appeared in some gossip magazine for being the boyfriend of Manuela, a young woman of high rank. But not only Manuela seems to be interested in him. Gael, another boy from a good family, has approached the club and is willing to help his ‘friend of his’ with the idea of opening a sports shop specializing in niche sports. They will talk about it on the way home, because the wealthy young man is going to take the couple in his car.
When Andrés and Manuela are talking with their mother and their two sisters, the little April and the older Sabrina, the young man discovers that Darío, his other brother, has returned from Baja California. Apparently, his father, Aquiles (Fernando Colunga) sent him a letter telling him that he was seriously ill and that he needed his help. There is a cat locked up, because Achilles is in perfect condition. The trick is that the father of the family has been thinking for days about how to make more money and, as things stand, delinquency seems the only option: he is going to kidnap Gael with the help of his children, and a couple of henchmen, to collect the ransom.
Full of clichés, the fiction created by Sebastián Ortega puts childish arguments in the mouth of Achilles to try to justify the actions of a guy who changed the police -he was serving as an agent until an accident left him lame- for delinquency. “There are two types of people, those who are afraid and stay at the door or those who are afraid and enter”, “those who have money, have a lot” or “money they made by fucking the workers” are just some of the ‘tormented’ phrases of a flat character, without nuances, always moody, who does not arouse any kind of empathy in the viewer.
And see that the writers make an effort to make it clear that the Grecos are not going through their best moment, although it is not that they are in the deepest of hardships, with a dish to put in their mouths every day, despite the four children to those who give roof and shelter. Yes, there are some cockroaches in the house, and of course, they are not on the same level as the people they rub shoulders with, but it is clear that Achilles is blinded by ambition and drags half the family with him, while his wife and her other two daughters live in poverty -especially irritating is April (Roberta Damián), who seems to have focused on Kubrick’s Lolita to embody this childish character-.
On the other hand, they highlight the excellent eighties setting that surrounds all the footage and the forcefulness of the few moving sequences that there are -the two kidnappings, for example-. However, the proposal stretches like chewing gum thanks to the ten episodes that a series has that points to a certain surrealism along the way – the role of the two daughters is extremely rare – and talks about issues such as machismo, family, friendship, the desire, the fidelity, the legacy, the rivalry between brothers, the class struggle -in such an obvious way that it produces a certain blush- or virility -look at the Torrente-type comment that Achilles makes, without a hint of humor-.
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