Based
on a true story, No Turning Back (Sin Returno) is
about a Honduran father and daughter in Southern California.
On October 27, 1998, Professor Pablo Fernandez (played
by Jesús Nebot) returned from teaching English at
a university in Honduras, only to find that Hurricane Mitch
destroyed his home, taking the life of his pregnant wife.
Promising to his remaining daughter Cristina (played by
Chelsea Rendon) that he would never leave her alone, they
enter the United States illegally from México in
January 1999 hoping for a better life. Without proper documentation,
his only employment is to pick tomatoes for a farmer in
California, while Cristina excels at an elementary school
where she makes plenty of friends due to her charming personality.
On September 9, 1999, he borrows his employer's truck to
transport his six-year-old daughter to a birthday party,
drives down a residential street in Oceanside, swerves
to avoid hitting a dog that suddenly emerges in the path
of the truck, and instead hits a five-year-old girl, who
soon dies. Rather than stopping, Pablo speeds on to avoid
being arrested by police and then separated from his daughter;
he tells her that they are embarking on a "vacation." While
attempting to escape the law, he runs into sassy, anti-establishment
Soid (played by Lindsay Price), an Asian American journalist
who provides transportation for them in exchange for a
videotaped version of their story. (Occasional footage
from a videocamera testifies that her cinematographic skills
are sorely lacking, however.) The film also focuses on
the family of the deceased daughter--a husband (played
by Paul Ganus) who is a physician at a local hospital,
a wife (played by Susan Haskell) who deeply mourns the
loss of their daughter, and their son. Clearly, Mrs. Knight
feels guilty because she did not prevent her daughter from
riding a tricycle into the street without first checking
traffic. Soon, the police assign the hit-and-run case to
cynical African American Detective Bryant (played by Vernée
Watson-Johnson) and her novice Hispanic partner Charlie
(played by Joe Estevez). Although Soid urges Pablo to escape
to México to avoid being arrested or extradited,
he shows her the scar that he received while attempting
to cross the border in January; Cristina also insists that
they should never return to México, preferring to
vacation in the Bahamas. Since the Bahamas is out of the
question, Pablo decides to head for Canada, and Soid agrees.
However, dangers impede the northern escape route. Since
Pablo has no safe place to stay, he has to sleep in uncomfortable
places. Lacking money, Cristina begs on the beach, and
Pablo robs a convenience story, putting a couple of hundred
dollars in his pocket. At the suggestion of Soid, he applies
for a maintenance job on a cruise ship, and she arranges
at her own expense for him to have fake papers. While jobhunting,
Pablo parks Cristina at a church-operated day care center,
where she fractures an ankle. The following day, still
in pain, Pablo takes her to a hospital. By some coincidence,
her emergency room physician is Dr. Knight, and the police
are soon hot on his trail. After a seven-day manhunt, they
handcuff Pablo, who is no longer interested in living if
he cannot keep his promise to stay with his daughter. The
inevitable tragic end for Pablo, however, is mitigated
at the end of the film by redemption for Cristina and the
Knights, though Soid's role in harboring a fugitive is
never brought to justice. Codirected by Julia Monejo and
Jesús Nebot, No Turning Back shows
what happens when a father is willing to sacrifice everything
to provide a better life for his daughter, providing an
insight into a motivation for illegal aliens to enter the
United States that is seldom exposed in the popular media.
As the tagline says, "Headlines never tell the whole
story." MH
I
want to comment on this film
