News of a Kidnapping

This is a poorly produced Telenovela from Colombia. It must be a "made for TV' series as it is so poorly executed. The editing is choppy, with scenes jumping back and forth between timelines. There is little excuse for the actors to take their clothes off whether it is relevant to the scene of not. The usual actors are hired to play their stereotypical "bad guy" roles, which they do......badly! The acting is over the top as it usually is in Telenovelas, a lot of shouting, screaming, hysteria, and eventually crying! It is clearly not intended to have much in the way of global appeal as so many of the references are Colombian.

To begin with, I can't stand soap operas, and this series is not one of them.!!! The series is very well done. My greatest joy was that it is based on the other party, the politicians, the government, the kidnappings and the police. It is not the Pablo Escobar story of drug traffickers that almost all of us already know, for example from Narcos, a relief indeed. I decided to watch it because the story is real and written by a great writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I have not been disappointed at all! I didn't know any of these actors, but they are all very good, nothing to criticize here. Honestly, I would have given it more stars if the story wasn't so clean, to put it in some way. The ways of rich Colombian families are absolutely frustrating, they treat adolescent children like small children drowning them in pampering and affection, of course it is based on the 80s, but still it seemed annoying to me. Superb filmography and photography! Very real in suburbs of Colombia. The story, despite being very well edited, perhaps could have avoided some unnecessary flashbacks, but they do not take away my respect for this tense, strong story that unfortunately happened in reality. I definitely recommend it if you like strong emotions, good action scenes and true stories that we should all be ashamed of. For the record I am not from Colombia.

The storyline appears accurate. I spent time as a mature student of Latin American politics and language in Columbia and others parts of that region in the early 90s. Police corruption was much more serious than this series indicates and is not well enough covered. The problems with this series are the shockingly poor production values. The series loses a lot as a result of shocking dubbing to an ugly Americanese. Even worse the English subtitles are not even the words used in the dubbing! Personally I found the above incompetence a direct and serious insult to the victims, the actors and the viewers.

Not only the original source is a masterpiece of journalism by García Márquez, but the series is extremely close to what it was like at the time in Colombia. Violence everywhere, starting with the worst criminal in history, Pablo Escobar, but also from the guerrillas, paramilitar groups, and a police pushed to its limits. Despite what is said at the beginning of the series, the characters and facts are 100% real (just Google them). Incredible hard to watch if you are Colombian, but I suppose if you know nothing about our history, you will find it difficult to believe, but I assure you, the reality was even worst.