Les Voyous

Utter nonsense, absolutely worthless based on a stupid scenario

Outrage is a good film with an excellent (as always) performance by Francesca Neri who is the main character in this movie. Warning: there is a rape scene that can be a bit hard to watch and graphic for some audiences. Overall it is a very interesting film which shows how the recklessness of 3 young men can affect the lives of others. It is a love story with a very young looking Antonio Banderas as a newspaper reporter who interviews and falls in love with a circus performer who after a brutal rape by a group of 3 young men, takes it upon herself to avenge the deed. It had an unexpected ending (at least for me )but I really enjoyed watching this film.

This film is a fine drama about a woman who gets raped by three men then hunts then down one by one with a cold determination of a professional assassin. After years of being an equestrian circus performer, Francesca Neri meets Antonio Banderas, a journalist, and romance seems to be in the offing but fate is unkind to them and sets in motion the tragic events of the story. The pursuit and revenge plot is straightforward with no surprises but the drama really builds when Neri herself becomes the hunted when an all-points alert is issued by Spanish police. Neri's role of a woman who takes the law into her own hands is one-dimensional but she sells her character well and manages to generate sympathy because of what happened to her. Neri and Banderas do have a certain chemistry between them and they make the premise work in spite of the unpleasant subject matter.

A young man, a journalist, interviews a talented performer at the circus in Madrid. Her speciality, marksmanship on horseback. The two people feel a mutual attraction and things move fast. He leaves for another assignment, just overnight. Alas, things can change in a person's life in just a day. New faces in the audience the next night, and it's not her horseback riding that is being admired. Blossoming joy turns to acrid despair, and worse is to come.

Outrage in the English dub, Dispara (Shoot!) in the original. Bad decisions, impulsive actions, the cruel smile of Fate. This is a movie that invites us to ask ourselves, would we really have done things differently had it been us? We think that we would, make more sensible decisions, but then again we're sitting comfortably merely watching a movie, and everyone is different, let's face it.

Marcos didn't want to go to Barcelona, and what if he hadn't? Ana shouldn't have shot at that beer can, right? Why did the policeman needlessly insist on inspecting her handbag? Did Mario really need to use that wine bottle the way he did? If only the doctor had respected her wishes, yes? The wheel of fortune turns, the thread of existence snags on a sharp stone, and things happen. The show must go on, but the circus is a dying institution.

Some nice landscape photography and beautiful scoring by Alberto Iglesias. This is a revenge tragedy, not a revenge exploitation movie.

In Madrid, the journalist Marcos Vallez (Antonio Banderas) is writing an article about a circus and he schedules an interview for the next day with the lead attraction Anna Meltzer (Francesca Neri) a.k.a. the Amazon Queen Guiditta, who simultaneously rides a horse and sharply shoots in balloons in her performance. After the interview, they feel attracted for each other and they spend the rest of the day and the night together. In the morning, Marcos travels to Barcelona to cover a concert and promises to meet Anna on the next day and follow her to hell. However, three men gang rape Anna during the night after her performance with extreme violence and the disturbed Anna takes her rifle and ammunition to chase the rapists, but with tragic consequences.

"Dispara!" is a depressing and heartbreaking travel to hell of a sweet character magnificently performed by the extremely beautiful and talented Francesca Neri. This movie is great but the plot is not simply a revenge of a woman brutally attacked but a very sad, realistic, dark and quite unpleasant drama, reason why it is not among my favorite movies. The character of Anna Meltzer is very well developed in the beginning; therefore when the rape happens, the viewer is entirely connected feeling empathy for her nice character. The attitude of Marcos Vallez is despicable, mixing feelings with his profession, telling his suspicious about Anna to his editor without any evidence. I regret that the DVD released by Brazilian Distributor Spectra Nova is awfully dubbed in English without option to the original language (Spanish). My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Dispara" ("Shoot")