Blast Beat

Niche as some of the situations Arango poses are, his movie is the rare work of art that viscerally understands the immigrant experience but is cerebral enough not to oversimplify it, allowing it to appear messy and imperfect, and all the more truthful for it.

Whether you’ll have a blast with this beat has nothing to do with your affinity for metal music and everything to do with your tolerance for “heart-on-the-sleeve” independent filmmaking.

Blast Beat cares far more about testing the limits of the family’s togetherness, and while the resolution doesn’t have the sweetness of a pop song, Arango is happy to settle for heavy metal discordance.

While both central performances give Blast Beat an inescapable urgency, the film can’t overcome its decision to embrace tired genre tropes that ultimately mark the screenplay.

Their many challenges wrap up too neatly, but there are enough genuine moments of truth in Blast Beat to make you wish there were even more.

There's plenty of potential here to bring original insights to the immigrant experience, but not enough skill in the plotting or execution to tap into it.