Adrián Vázquez
José Sánchez
Overview
José Sánchez has big ambitions, terrible instincts, and a mustache to match. After a string of bad deals, he accidentally bluffs his way into becoming El Serpiente, a political boss feared for all the wrong reasons. Now he must pull off one final deal to stay alive — a deal far beyond anything he can fake.
Cast
12 people
Reviews
5 min readThe Mustache That Ate Mexico
I kept waiting for the joke. Not the kind that makes you laugh—though there are a few of those, dry and bitter as lime on an open wound—but the kind that reveals itself as the whole point. Son-in-Law is billed as a comedy, but the only real punchline is how easily a man with no talent, no scruples, and a mustache that looks like it was drawn on with a Sharpie can become a political kingpin.
The film knows this. The problem is, it doesn’t seem to know what to do with the knowledge.
Gerardo Naranjo’s latest is a tragicomedy in the truest sense: it wants to make you laugh at the absurdity of power, then gut-punch you with the consequences. The trouble is, the two impulses don’t always play nice. The first act is all swagger and bluster, a farcical rise to power that feels like The Wolf of Wall Street if Jordan Belfort had been a middle-aged Mexican hustler with a gift for bullshit and a wardrobe of ill-fitting guayaberas.
Adrián Vázquez’s José Sánchez is a man who mistakes confidence for competence, and the film leans hard into the disconnect—until it doesn’t.
Here’s the thing about José: he’s not a mastermind. He’s not even particularly clever. He’s just a guy who got lucky, then unlucky, then lucky again, until the luck ran out and the only thing left was the mustache.
Vázquez plays him with a kind of desperate charm, like a man who’s spent his whole life talking his way out of trouble and is now realizing, too late, that some doors don’t have handles. The performance is the film’s anchor, the one element that never wavers, even when the script starts to. There’s a moment early on, when José is trying to impress a group of cartel lieutenants, where Vázquez’s voice cracks just slightly on the word "confianza." It’s the only time he betrays doubt, and it’s devastating.
Audience Opinions
Audience 5.2/10
"A sharply acted but divisive narco-political satire weighed down by messy structure and overfamiliar ideas."
The rise-and-fall story of José Sánchez lands best when it leans into dark drama, with a committed central performance and some biting moments about corruption and the so‑called Mexican dream. latestnetflix.com's take is that Expectations of a broad comedy leave many disappointed, and even viewers who appreciate the ambition often find the pacing slack, the tone confused, and the critique too similar to earlier political satires to feel distinctive.
What viewers praise
- Compelling lead performance Adrián Vázquez’s portrayal of José as a slick, morally hollow operator is consistently singled out as the element that keeps the film engaging.
- Unflinching corruption portrait The depiction of collusion between cartels and political power feels raw and recognizable, to the point that some viewers describe it as almost documentary-like in how it mirrors real scandals.
- Effective dark tone When the script leans into its bleak, tragicomic angle, the mix of violence, scheming, and bitter irony creates a striking mood.
- Not just empty genre thrills Several comments appreciate that the story eventually strips away lighter, more unbelievable touches and settles into a more grounded and serious trajectory.
Common complaints
- Mismatch with comedy label Viewers lured in by the comedy tag report almost no genuine laughs and describe the film as essentially a heavy drama with one or two amusing scenes at most.
- Derivative of earlier satires Mexican viewers in particular compare it unfavorably to well-known local political satires, arguing that it borrows their ideas without the same sharpness or originality.
- Scattered, overstuffed plot The narrative keeps piling on conspiracies, betrayals, and side threads, causing the film to lose focus and making the last stretch feel more like an overlong episode than a tightly shaped feature.
- Uneven pacing and editing Comments describe an erratic rhythm where scenes drag, story beats repeat, and the flow between tones and time periods can feel clumsy or confusing.
- Flat supporting characters Outside of the protagonist and a few vivid side roles, characters are seen as thinly written and interchangeable, reducing the emotional impact of the story’s darker turns.
Recommended for
Mexican political satire seekers Dark crime drama viewers Gerardo Naranjo followers Adrián Vázquez fans Narcopolitics story enthusiasts
Full Plot (Spoilers)
Spoiler warning
This section contains the full plot, including major story reveals. Overview above stays spoiler-free.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsGuadalajara got the world premiere. The Mezcal did not follow.
On 18 April 2026, The Son-in-Law screened in the Guillermo del Toro Theater at FICG 41, official Mezcal competition, director and principal cast in the house. 
Netflix had already dated the global drop for 1 May, with select Mexican theaters on 19 April. The film left Guadalajara without the prize. That is not a scandal. latestnetflix.com's take is that it is the first public shrug at a stack that looked, from the press release, unkillable.
Gerardo Naranjo directed. James Schamus wrote and produced, sharing script credit with Gabriel Nuncio and Alexandro Aldrete, the House of Flowers pair. Chile's Fabula, Pablo and Juan de Dios Larraín, produced. 
Variety framed it as Schamus's second Mexico job for Netflix after the 2021 series Somos. Naranjo, the Miss Bala director, did not sell it as a romp. "The Son-in-Law explores betrayal as a central narrative thread, portraying it as a widespread practice in this country. The film is a provocation, inviting us to examine a reality that is equally ridiculous and contradictory." Schamus sounded almost giddy. After Somos he had "dreamed of returning to Mexico." On this shoot, "that dream came true." The characters' "great Mexican dream" turned into "a rather insane, absurd tragicomedy." His own trip, he said, was "a simple, wonderful dream."
The mustache walked in first.
Adrián Vázquez plays José Sánchez, a failed hustler who bluffs his way into the handle El Serpiente. TMDB lists the original title as El yerno, Spanish, Mexico, about 102 minutes. In a phone interview with AM, Vázquez said the hook was the character's optimism. He called José "stupidly optimistic, stupidly human, and humanly stupid," a man chasing recognition and power "without really knowing what we want it for." He also said the character never finds balance. Once José "decides to enter the game of criminality, there is no going back." He praised Naranjo as generous and said Schamus was in the room from preproduction. The title is the dirty joke. José marries up, then uses the in-laws' world as a ladder into state power. Moviedelic later asked if he was a real attorney general. The answer on the record is no. The story is fiction built on a climate of graft, not a biopic the filmmakers have claimed.
Then the room split.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UdFj8Aec3o
Cinescopia's FICG dispatch called it "probably one of the worst Mexican movies we will see this year," a failed Luis Estrada knockoff with terrible hair and makeup and nothing new in the filmmaking. Decider's John Serba found a satire that "refuses to be easy to laugh at" and a lead "we don't like or dislike." He also admitted the politics felt like inside baseball watched from outside the stadium. Netflix Content VP Francisco Ramos still thanked the team for "courage and commitment to Mexican cinema" and said the meaning would only land in the watching. The official trailer is already up on Netflix Latinoamérica. The gossip is not a secret casting war. It is a prestige sandwich, Naranjo plus Schamus plus the Larraíns, that premiered in a named theater, missed the local prize, and split the room between provocation and pastiche.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
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