Okupas Reviews

//VAGUE SPOILERS AHEAD//

Okupas is one of the most reknown series from Argentina. It is remarking that even though it was released during a time when the culture of the country was certainly different from nowadays, it's still kept in high regard by a considerable portion of the general audience, this being a testimony to how genuine and charismatic the series is.
Okupas came at a time when the country was experiencing one of its toughest moments in respects to economy, and a growing distrust in politics from the population, culminating in the crisis of the summer of 2001. During this time, lots of argentine movies and series released depicted plots of black mailers, thieves, and in general people trying to find its course in a decaying and selfish society; Nueve Reinas, Los Simuladores, El Bonaerense, and Pizza, Birra, Faso can all be examples of this.
Depicting flawed and often selfish and violent characters such as these can be a hard task due to the problem of making the viewer to relate and care for them. Okupas creates a cast of characters that, despite not actually being composed of "nice" people, have positive characteristics and values that help to create empathy. Even the antagonist of the series, the Negro Pablo, a violent character who even tries to rape the protagonist, has a set of codes and values to respect when it comes to treating with people and friends, and manages to feel remorse or worry for his relationship with some characters that make him feel human and multi-faceted. In general, the value and respect for the concept of friendship and fellowship that the characters have is the most relevant characteristic of the cast. The protagonists manage to handle a dinamic that is as adorable as idiotic, and in general they don't actually have bad intentions, instead trying to help each other out or to find a path in life; trying to construct a place to live in or an adventure to have.
I feel that the relationship between the characters of Ricardo and Pollo could've been developed further, revealing situations of the past that helped to build their fraternity, as the things the characters do and feel for each other over the course of the series are incredibly intense. At the same time, developing the relationship between Pollo and his mother and why he chose the path that he chose would have been a welcomed adition, as the treatment of this during the first episode sins of being very brief. Moreover, the frustration of Ricardo with college could've been developed further, and maybe have some of his family members such as his mother or father show worry or make attempts to reconcile with him. On the other side, the characters of Walter and the Chiqui, although fun, are not very complex and the dinamic that they represent tends to feel tiresome in the final episodes of the series, and not much about their past or backround is revealed either. I mean, Walter for example had a life before meeting Ricardo, yet his old friends or family never make an appearence nor are ever mentioned.
The dialogue manages to feel very autenthic and convincing due to being heavily based on improvisation. This wouldn't mean anything if the improv was done by people who knew nothing about thieving culture, but the cast of characters is largely portrayed by actors who were raised in this type of culture. Nevertheless, it can be certainly tiring to witness the same dinamic of insulting all the time and testing the other person's guts.
It is also remarkable that despite the series being produced under a very low budget, the situations and the settings all manage to feel real and impactful. With this I mean that you won't find bad special effects or cheap-looking scenaries. Instead, the series is mostly based around ordinary situations.
One thing that I found in common between the series and the other work of his director and writer, the movie Pizza, Birra, Faso, is that in both works of fiction the main character seems to see the escape of Buenos Aires as the way to guide his life out of its crisis, but neither the Cordobés nor Ricardo manage to leave the city at the end, and in some way are consumed by it. In Okupas, Ricardo has the possibility of starting a project with his friends: travelling around Argentina having adventures, straying away from the toxic urban life. Perhaps it's not the most righteous choice to make, but it takes the most positive aspect of his life, his friendships, and streghens them, all while leaving aside the thieving and the violence. Ricardo also has the choice to stick with Sofia and his son, move out to her house and live with her. These posibilities are present to him up until the very end, however, he can't help but confrontate with the gang from the Docke, possesed by rage and the desire for revenge, and pays the consecuences for this. This is also a positive point of the series: the severe consecuences for the life decisions of the characters, whereas it be the decision to consume drugs, to rob, or to murder.
In the end, outside of depicting a side of argentine society wonderfully, the series is not something very out of the ordinary, having a good yet obvious message and treatment of its topics. The plot, on the other side, manages to be simple yet convoluted at the same time, maily during the separation of the protagonists (special mention to Pollo's unrealistic complex master plan).
Summing up, it is an overall decent show.