La caja 507

Great tension. Great actors. great script. a delicious film. maybe it´s the spanish "HEAT". I think the Coronado´s role is the bad guy of the year. Very nice!

An interesting thriller of Spanish atmosphere, where they are mixed the dark financial manipulations of certain economic groups with the thirst of justice - vengeance? of a normal man that is involved in it by chance. Good work of Antonio Resines who leaves their comic appearance to make a serious and austere role. Two purely casual facts and its apparent relationship among them becomes a line of investigation that takes us toward a prospective but not less interesting end. Something superficial as for the character that José Coronado plays - the "key of the action" something primitive in his decisions with good performance touches in brief appearances - Sancho Gracia - give a good inflection point to the film keeping the lines of interest until the end. I think Spanish cinema has begun to reach an improvement in its thrilling genre productions . This movie is a sample.

La Caja 507 is a slow-burning crime-drama whose story leans its back against the NO-HERO structure. A predecessor to Paul Haggis's CRASH(2004). There are absolutely no central characters nor heroes to follow. Of course, this is not unique to Spanish cinema at all. But, in general there is no attachment to Spain in La Caja 507. Sympathy grows only when innocents get hurt, which is when general Spanish family audience would catch the drift. When Dafne dies at the forest fire in the beginning, director and screenwriter Enrique Urbizu lets his audience know what Dafne's father investigates throughout the entire movie: Dafne gets killed for her father's bank robbery to become whitewashed by fingerprints.

Strong hook and spontaneous acting builds an unbearably awe-inspiring tension. I keep asking to myself, what kind of a "modern" parenthood that is to endanger their children's future due to corrupted business relations with gangs or mafia.

No heroes equal to no celebrities. Urbizu wants us to be part of the unstoppable descending of the criminal tension from business layer down to emotional layer. A clear decision awaits Dafne's father to be made, which turns the rest of the story downhill in suspense. If you have enough patience and detail-oriented thinking view, the boring sub-plots may give you more clear understanding of the resolution. This resolution phase encompasses Dafne's father "letting everything go".

La Caja 507 is a memorabilia collective film. DVD and blu-ray both in English and Spanish had directorial interviews. I have always had it, in my brick-and-mortar cinema archives and library of selection movies. Classifiable under western european Family movies genre.

I don't know how managed spanish to realize only masterpieces when is about thrillers: tension , suspance , original story,intelligent write , brilliant play and direction, all the american thrillers don't have.

More or less in the 'cine noir' category, Urbizu sets us up with a refreshing thriller, almost as if he wanted to cock a snoot at the specialists in this genre on the other side of the big puddle. Interesting, even original, story, with good interpretations by both Resines and Coronado, neither of whom have ever been favourite actors for me. However here their playing is convincing and maintains tension throughout. Very definitely a 'masculine' film, as the ladies are very much relegated to minor roles. A very beautiful, exquisite Dafne Fernández (Goya en Burdeos) disappears rather promptly, and the equally adorable Goya Toledo was given a disappointingly secondary part to play. Be that as it may, the story holds interest, brings out all that charming world of corruption and mafias on Spain's 'Casta del Sol' as well as other deviations in today's world - deliberate forest fires, wife-beating............

Certainly worth a watch if you find this one on TV or on DVD; but do not expect an easy-to-swallow job, as the viewer's concentration has to play an active part - and there are not many films in this genre that manage that!

If you enjoy this film you might well like '99.9' (1997) (qv).