El custodio

I really tried to like this movie and as IMDb shows here, some others were more successful by doing so than me. Yes this movie has good ideas and yes it is a psychological study of a bodyguard ... you could say a documentary.

And by being or feeling like a documentary it dries you up inside. In other words it gets boring. Why does it get boring? Because the work of a bodyguard is boring. I don't need 20 scenes that tell me, that the life of a bodyguard sucks ... 2 or 3 would've been enough! For me this movie was a waste of time and opportunities ... they could've either created some drama, but more importantly, they could've shortened the movie a lot! Better yet, they should have!

Another Argentinian film that copies everything done before regarding shots and framing. Is like they all come from a film school that shows to the pupils films from the sixties and then, all of them copy here and there a shot. Amazing!. The real Argentinian cinema is Sorin and Agresti, the rest just plays with the ignorance of local film critics and snob festivals. Do this director has something original to offer?? The film is a bore, pretentious in simplicity. The pathetic thing shows that the director just wanted to show how much can copy but have nothing to say, absolutely nothing more than try to jump the leap and become a Fassbinder or any master sadly forgotten. Wake up people, take a look to the old masters and stop being amaze about things that already exist long long time ago.

This movie has no emotions. No heart. The idea/the story is great, but the movie is not. Most of the Argentinian movies have this problem. The lack of music makes it even more boring and slow. This movie doesn't make you feel any feelings but boredom. i know the actor from other films and he is a great professional, but in this movie is totally wasted. Nobody can declare that he did a great performance. He didn't make any gesture, he didn't even talk. Nothing. The dialogs are simple, dull and poor. In my opinion our taste for movies depend on our own values, culture, upbringing, experiences, etc. Thats why some people love a movie, and some other people don't. But this...this is a bad movie.

Well, here again we have a variety of reactions to a movie. I found this film brilliant. Of course it was slow but that was a main point. But boring?..For me, not at all. I acknowledge that others have found it boring, but I most certainly did not. For me, it was a deep insight into our society and the shallowness of some of those in it, and into a man's mind as he is so ignored by it. No-one around him recognizes the humanity under his exterior...and certainly would not expect, understand (or care) about what lead him to implode. It is a brilliantly executed film...in my opinion. The superb acting in the film of the main actor reminds me of the acting of the Secret Policeman in the recent German film, The Lives of Others. ...So much is conveyed by few words and movement..but what emotion there is! I highly recommend both films to readers here.

A narrator with an omniscient and external point of view on a movie is called a heterodiegetic one. He can't participate to the story he tells, for he's not in it, but beside it. The great achievement of "El Custodio" is to adopt this heterodiegetic point of view, and to transform it into a real character, who is the center of the movie, his heart as well as its reason to to exist. But this original point of view also always stays out of the world he lives in, and is excluded from the story he's supposed to be the hero. That's why this movie, certainly the first absolutely heterodiegetic, gives like never the frightful feeling to always stand unseen and at the edge of the world when your work dooms you to the invisible and nonexistence.

The movie is centered on Rubèn, a character unable to occupies the all space because of is function : he is the bodyguard of a Argentine minister, and for that, it seems that he doesn't have the right to exist independently. And the all bet of the movie is to keep this strange heterodiegetic point of view in a realistic way all along. The realism has here a double face : a documentary one and a subjective one. The first one means that we constantly fallow the character in his everyday life, in its absolute routine (fallow the minister, wait for him for hours, buy a new bulletproof vest, etc.). No need to say that this bodyguard doesn't have the life of Aaron Pierce (the bodyguard of President Palmer in "24") and doesn't risk his life everyday. The movie constantly avoid any action scene, because the reality of a bodyguard's life isn't full of action and tension, but full of waiting, humiliation and waist of time.

The second realistic aspect of the movie is apparently in contradiction with this documentary aspect, but is far more important : it's a subjective realism. The all movie is always seen with Rubèn's eyes, and that's where it becomes interesting. You really have the feeling to experience a bodyguard's live, to see through his eyes and to understand his loneliness while watching this movie. This point of view is remarkably developed from the first frame (when you see the first ritual of a long list of rituals to come : Rubèn's shaving in the morning, then dressing with his bullet proof vest...) to the last (absolutely logical, but a little bit predictable), with some experimental cadres, reflections games on mirrors and building glasses and graphic and cold symmetrical constructions.

The all movie is perfectly draft and carries with courage its original theme to its end. And if there's no action in it, the movie is always dense and tense, for the routine that the movie describes can be blown away at any moment. And the terrifying impression of becoming invisible to the very same people you work for and you're supposed to give your life to protect when your function tells you to, remains long after the screening.