City of M (2000)

Money and its accumulation are the universal staples of modern realist film noir. Picture a good-hearted bad boy gaming the streets to get over. Whether this struggling figure of flawed circumstance happens to be stumbling on the mean curbs of Brooklyn, Paris, Aberdeen, Moscow, or any impersonal, big-city points in between, chances are a film following his exploits will be charged with electrified currents of moral conflict. In City of M (2000), the struggle for finances and pride play out in the doomed alleyways of Lima, Peru. All a man wants is to be accepted as a man. Why must he sacrifice his soul and his dignity in that pursuit?