Sundown 2022

Neil Bennett, a quiet man from London, is on vacation in Acapulco with his sister Alice Bennett and her two children, Colin Bennett and Alexa Bennett. Surrounded by a luxurious hotel, pristine beaches, and gourmet meals, the family keeps up a busy schedule of upscale activities while Neil driftingly watches from the sidelines, a contrast to the others’ appetite for leisure and spectacle.

When a sequence of urgent phone calls shatters the sunlit routine, Alice learns that their mother is hospitalized, and the mood shifts from carefree to tense. The news is heavy, and the family readies to return home. A second call confirms their mother’s death, and the moment exposes Neil’s aloof facade: while Alice dissolves into tears, he remains eerily calm. At the airport, a clever pretense about a forgotten passport leaves the rest of the family to depart without him, a truthful hint that Neil intends to stay behind in Acapulco.

In truth, Neil has no real plan to rejoin them. He forms an easy companionship with a local taxi driver, Jorge Campos, and settles into a smaller life—cheap meals, quiet beaches, and the open invitation to drift. He starts seeing a friendly local woman, a budding romance with Berenice, and gradually the vacation’s sheen gives way to a different rhythm, one that feels almost transactional and detached. A routine disruption arrives when Neil discovers his belongings missing from his hotel room, a puzzling theft that leaves him unfazed rather than upset. The following day brings a shocking moment: a drive-by shooting that he simply observes with the same blank detachment.

The Bennetts’ immense wealth, rooted in the meat processing business, becomes a defining backdrop as the family confronts the fracture between personal loyalty and corporate duty. Alice makes her way back to Acapulco to press Neil about returning, and a discussion about the family business leads Neil to sign a document relinquishing his assets and inheritance in the presence of the family lawyer, Richard. The moment is both procedural and symbolic, marking Neil’s severance from the lineage that defined him.

Tragedy strikes when Alice is killed by criminals driven by Jorge, a brutal turn that sends shockwaves through everyone. The police arrest Neil, now suspected of ordering the assassination, but his tears reveal a different, deeper ache—grief rather than guilt. In the aftermath, his representatives inform him that the company remains—and will be—his, and, after Richard secures his release from custody, Neil returns to the hotel, carrying on with Berenice and the beach as his only constants.

A tense confrontation unfolds when [Richard], [Colin Bennett], and Alexa Bennett confront Neil in his room. The exchange grows heated, and [Alexa Bennett] delivers a sharp blow with a glass bottle, a moment that crystallizes the volatile dynamics within the family. In the end, Neil agrees to relinquish the rights to the company to Colin Bennett and [Alexa Bennett], receiving a monthly pension plus a £100,000 lump sum as a down payment—an arrangement that seals his distance from the wealth that once defined him.

A few days later, a serious fall changes everything again: Neil tumbles down a flight of stairs and is taken to the hospital after a fall that reveals brain cancer. While Berenice spends the night by his side, Neil, overwhelmed, leaves her and walks alone through the night-time streets of Mexico City. The film closes with a stark, almost incongruous image: dawn breaks over the beach, the bright sun spilling over the same clothes and shoes left behind on a chair, a visual echo of a life paused, a man stripped of what he thought he wanted, and a future that remains uncertain. >