In Argentina over 8,000 people die in traffic accidents every year. Behind each of these tragedies is a flourishing industry founded on insurance payouts and legal loopholes.
Sosa is a lawyer who tours the A&E Departments of the public hospitals and the police stations in search of potential clients. Luján is a young doctor recently arrived from the provinces. Their love story kicks off one night when Luján and Sosa meet in the street. She's trying to save a man's life; he wants him on his client portfolio. Read more …
Both Darin and Gusman are superb in conveying the desperate efforts of their libidinous characters to escape their nightmarish predicaments, with the camera focusing on their increasingly damaged faces and bodies.
Grimly satisfying noir.
A bleak but emotionally bloodless look at the traffic chaos that claims 8000 lives on Argentina's streets every year. It's relatively effective as a thriller, but rarely welcomes the viewer into its world of legalities and despair.
The world is compelling and unusual but the plotting predictable and the central relationship between Sosa and an idealistic young doctor (Martina Gusman) rather unconvincing.
Bruising, moving and utterly compelling.
The love story between Ricardo Darín’s ambulance-chasing lawyer and Martina Gusman’s young medic, well-played by both, nonetheless has a Hollywood-ish air that sits oddly with the gritty plot.
The film’s bitterness of vision may owe as much to style as to content: this is not King Lear, it does not go deep. But a vision of sorts it is, harsh and haunting.
The chaotic and violent finale is breathtakingly horrible, and all too appropriate for a group of people making a good living out of poor people being hit by cars.
Pablo Trapero carefully constructs his tale of low-level corruption linked to high places then allows Darin and Gusman to let rip, with memorable consequences.
The problem with the film is its murkiness of plotting – we are never quite sure who owes, or owns, whom – though Gusman and Darín are good as the flawed couple.
The gore of the injuries witnessed is surpassed in violence by the attitudes of greed and voracity by the insurance brokers, a comment on the deplorability of an economic system founded on avarice. The most grotesque theme however is the complete disregard of compassion expressed by the characters fighting for the chance to swindle the bereaved and wounded.
The film's plotting is at times ragged and muffled, though this might be intentional, a way of suggesting the endless ramifications of the endemic corruption. The performances, however, have depth and resonance.
The vivid, grimy details of Darin and Gusman's nocturnal work are a good deal more distinctive than conventional hard-boiled plotting, and there won't be many thrillers this year that pack a bigger, more teeth-rattling punch.
Scenes spark then fade, until the sinuous climax arrives with collision force.
Pablo Trapero
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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