Critic Reviews

The soft-spoken, impressionistic documentary (with a hypnotic score built from the sounds of construction) climaxes with a six-minute helicopter-cam view of the colossal structure to which these somebodies have been dedicating their sweat, and sometimes their very lives.

Leo Heiblum's pulsating music and Samuel Larson's dense, fascinating sound editing rewardingly compliment Rulfo's electrifying visuals.

With In the Pit [Rulfo] isn't advancing any totalizing theory, a treatise on transportation or an argument about alienation; he is, rather simply and elegantly, revealing the secret human face of a seemingly inhuman world.

Rulfo's simple strategy of sticking close to his subjects and allowing them to wax philosophical about their lives and labors pays off.

Rulfo adds punch to his material with speeded-up visuals and an eye-popping, six-minute helicopter shot of the entire 10-mile project - which alone is worth the price of admission.

Life on the freeway is hell, but what comes next for these workers might be worse.

It's an interesting, if dissatisfying rumination on the working people of industry -- how they labor, how they rest, what they think and feel.

What Rulfo needs, unfortunately, is what too many trendy directors forsake: some social context, some succinct voice-overs and some talking heads to put the serious issues (urban poverty, urban stress, environmental degradation, corruption) into perspective.

Captures the building of the freeway as well as the lives of the people working on it. The problem is, the lives of the people aren't all that interesting and the freeway being built isn't either.

In the Pit's empathy feels strictly skin-deep, its insight even shallower.