Luis Marias' director debut is a solid noir that demonstrates once more his ability as a writer to create charismatic characters and well plotted stories.
This is a classical noir story, intriguing until the last minute, precise, violent and complex: there's an alcoholic police detective (excellent Antonio Resines), the anguished anti-hero without memory who investigates a crime he may have committed after a monumental hangover; there's that femme fatale (Abascal, great actress) too, the victim's sister, hurt in her leg and in her past; a bag full of money stolen from an expeditive gang; a fallen-from-grace actress (recuperated Esperanza Roy, she may start a new career after her solid performance)that witnessed the crime and takes advantage from it to blackmail the troubled detective...
Sound familiar? Maybe, but Maria's update all this recurrent items and constructs a neo-noir thriller with its own personality, following the Spanish noir tradition that director Enrique Urbizu renewed in the eighties with "Todo por la pasta".
As far as the direction is concerned, Luis Marias puts together some good moments (the film start, so concise; the recurrent X motive - a reference to Hawks' "Scarface"? -, above all in that beautiful image of Resines and Abascal in a railway intersection; the desolating ending) and shows enough competence to keep up the tension along the film.
I'd say we can expect notable things from him in the future!
This is a classical noir story, intriguing until the last minute, precise, violent and complex: there's an alcoholic police detective (excellent Antonio Resines), the anguished anti-hero without memory who investigates a crime he may have committed after a monumental hangover; there's that femme fatale (Abascal, great actress) too, the victim's sister, hurt in her leg and in her past; a bag full of money stolen from an expeditive gang; a fallen-from-grace actress (recuperated Esperanza Roy, she may start a new career after her solid performance)that witnessed the crime and takes advantage from it to blackmail the troubled detective...
Sound familiar? Maybe, but Maria's update all this recurrent items and constructs a neo-noir thriller with its own personality, following the Spanish noir tradition that director Enrique Urbizu renewed in the eighties with "Todo por la pasta".
As far as the direction is concerned, Luis Marias puts together some good moments (the film start, so concise; the recurrent X motive - a reference to Hawks' "Scarface"? -, above all in that beautiful image of Resines and Abascal in a railway intersection; the desolating ending) and shows enough competence to keep up the tension along the film.
I'd say we can expect notable things from him in the future!
