Birds of Passage movie review (2019)

Zaida’s mother, Ursula (Carmiña Martínez), this family’s very imposing matriarch, seems suspicious of Rapayet as soon as makes his intentions known. She decrees a dowry that she seems to assume is way beyond the man’s means; it includes scores of goats and cows – the mainstays of Wayúu subsistence – as well as some valuable necklaces. It’s not long, though, before he returns with all the dowry items in tow. The way he enriched himself enough to afford his pretty and pricey bride is where the film’s crime story begins.

Much later in the tale, a woman from another Wayúu family notes that over the centuries her people have fended off pirates, the English, the Spanish and various Colombian governments trying to control them. They are very tradition-bound folks; they believe in ghosts, magic talismans and communications with the dead, and their paramount value is honor. Yet by the time the remark about their history is made, it carries a bitter irony, because the Wayúus’ way of life has been upended by a new enemy: lust after the riches that come from dealing marijuana.

Rapayet’s entry to the business happens when he overhears a shop owner say that some young, long-haired Peace Corps volunteers, who are in Colombia to combat the threat of Communism, are looking for some pot. Rapayet and his best friend, a high-spirited black guy named Moisés (Jhon Narváez), know a source up in the mountains, and soon they are making huge wads of cash delivering big bales of the weed to gringo drug runners who fly and in out on small planes.

But the operation doesn’t run smoothly for long. One day, the hot-tempered Moisés thinks he sees evidence that the gringos are betraying them by also dealing with some of their competitors, so he whips out a pistol and kills two of them. The murders are anathema to the Wayúu, and Rapayet’s family demands he execute Moisés. 

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