The film begins with a group of boys appearing to have fun playing bullfighter with one another. We know from the opening shots that big cities represent the fact that people are being impoverished as the bricks of the city go up. Children are being left behind. This innocent scene turns to the boys smoking, and then their leader, El Jaibo returns from an escape out of a juvenile jail to lead the group into stealing money. Their first victim being a blind man. During the attempted robbery we see a young boy, Eyes, who has been crying as his father has left him and did not return.
These children have been abandoned, and left to themselves to be raised they choose to follow the person who appears to be the strongest. They would rather be on his, El Jaibo's side, than have to risk facing him down the line. And, he becomes even more scary when he kills Julian, the one boy who will stand up to him. The death of Julian stirs in Pedro the need to be good. This is a natural urge from his soul that wants to come out.
The rest of the film deals with Pedro's desire to break free of the cycle of violence, crime and betrayal in breaking from Jaibo. But, Pedro's willingness to stand up the brute results in his death. We see the police then gun down Jaibo which is a metaphor for the fact that it takes a greater force to stop people with the lack of conscious such as Jaibo has. And, if Jaibo is not stopped the good within these children will be crushed. But this is just one part of the story. How the children got this way is what the story is about. It is a broken system that they live in, where the rich get richer while the poor become more poor. A system where family life does not exist, there is little if any love in the home because everyone is starving and anxious as to how they will live. Because of this the parents abandon their kids leaving them to pay the price for their inability to deal with the hardships of life. The parents run away like children, and the children die like men. It is an ironic horror.
