Spanish Judges

Lillard's performance was similar to that in "The Curve". Which is also a really good movie if you like plot twists. D'Onofrio gave a perfect performance and Mars Girl is the cutest comic relief. Bottom line. I was very happy with the movie. I was excited up until the end when it took a very ...different turn, even then, I want to see it again. I am curious to see what extras, behind-the-scenes kinda stuff they have on the DVD. Anyways, 2 hours alone in the dark with Lillard and D'Onofrio is never a waste of time.

I must warn you, there are some spoilers in it. But to start it off, I got "Spanish Judges" on February I think. It was mention it was the last copy, but as I see, it wasn't back-ordered. But either way, I have it. I thought it was good. I wanted to see this mainly because of the great actor, Matthew Lillard (I'm surprised no one on the reviews mention the scar) although it is kind of low budget, getting enough money to make this film would be worth spending. Man, what a good actor.

The story it about a con artist known as Jack (Matthew Lillard) who "claims" to have merchandises called The Spanish Judges. If you don't know what Spanish Judges are or haven't seen the trailer for this and this is the first review you have read, I won't even say what they are. I figure it would be a big twist of no one knew what it was. He needs protection, so he hires a couple who are also crooks, Max and Jamie (Vincent D'Onofrio and Valeria Golino) as well as a crook that goes by the name of Piece (Mark Boone Junior). He has a girlfriend who won't even tell anyone her name because she's from Mars, as she said. So they (mainly Jack) call her "Mars Girl". Everything starts out fine, but then it turns to one big game. A game that involves some lust, lies and betrayal.

There was some over acting in it (Matt and Valeria, as well as Tamara, were not one of them). There were some scenes they could've done better and the score could've been a little better as well. Some of the score was actually good. The theme they used for the beginning and the end (before the credits) was a good song choice, that's my opinion. The fight scene in the end could've been a little longer and a little more violent, but what can you do? One more comment on Matt: Damn, he plays a smooth, slick con man.

I know this is a review, but I need to make a correction towards NeCRo, one of the reviewers: Valeria Golino is not a newcomer. According to this site, she has been acting since 1983. To me, and hopefully to others, she is well known as Charlie Sheen's Italian love interest in both the "Hot Shots!" movies. But good review.

Although I think it's one of the rare films I've seen and it's really good (which is why I gave it 10 stars above), I will give the grade of what I thought when I first saw it.

8/10

Im a huge M Lillard fan that's why I ended up watching this movie. Honestly I doubt that if he wasn't in the movie i would of enjoyed it as much or even watched it but once I did watch it realize the story was pretty decent. A bad ending I must say but I did see it coming. It's a low budget movie and some of the actors weren't really good but all in all I rated this movie 7/10.

The suspense of wondering what Lillard was actually up to was what really keeped me interested in this movie.

Its a good rental!

7/10

Two aspects of this movie had the chance to make it a good flick, the psychos in the gang, and the plot twists, mostly betrayals. But it gets bogged down in a lot of banter, and the pace gets too slow, not as slow as "High Art", but close. There is also a little too much over-acting, sort of like a high school play. The beginning sets things up fairly well, and the ending has all the plot twists, but you have to bear with the middle scenes. The psychos were well thought out, but not well executed, rather shallowly done. Better caper/heist flicks to rent would be Phoenix, Route 9, or Judas Kiss, and a better psycho movie would be In Dreams, but it might be worth a couple bucks if you don't get your hopes up too high. -Bob

This is not a bad movie, but it sure doesn't greet the viewer in any expected way. You're not given any hit about who to like or who is the bad guy, so if you get stuck trying to figure that out it's going to make the movie less enjoyable. Although it's twisty plot makes you think that's what it's all about, you really have to approach it as a character-driven piece. Even the characters you end up disliking (I found Mars Girl annoying to no end) are played well, so you can't really fault the actors for how it doesn't all quite come together. I found myself *wanting* to like the movie more, but I felt a little too isolated as a viewer to care that much.