Chanceys

Some movies with this or a very similar plot (Man on Fire or Payback) work out quite well, being enjoyable, thought provoking, and even amusing.

To my mind this movie doesn't. The action feels so dense and frenetic, perhaps even overexaggerated, that you feel you're unable to process things as they are shown. You also get the sense that the actions in the latter part of the re-release are irrational and over exaggerated, so over the top that to me it felt like film school or acting school where actors are keen to show just how much brio they can put into a role. Excessive brio to the point that things become ridiculous.

The basic plot of the movie could have been very rewarding but my sense is that the director was so out to show just how many taboos he could break that making a decent or even plausible movie wasn't even a goal.

As is well known, Monica Bellucci is easy on the eyes. In this movie you get the sense that she knows this very well and that she and the director are counting on that to keep viewers engaged with a movie that starts out formulaicly, then becomes shocking, and then implausible.

I imagine it would have been possible to make an exciting and entertaining movie around the basic outline of this movie's plot, but this, most definitely isn't.

It takes about 30 minutes for the first iota of suspense to enter the movie, the plot, which could have been promising falls flat. The complete movie simply doesn't feel plausible but rather like a project by bored high schoolers. There is little to no cleverness in the plot.

It has been a long time since I've paid to see a movie as ghastly as this. I cannot recommend it except as a punishment, perhaps for prisoners, as I can't imagine a non captive audience putting up with this garbage of a movie.

The core of this movie is a fairly good police thriller that begins with a kidnapping in Rosario, Argentina. Because of the prominence of the kidnapping victim - and perhaps the communist insurgency Argentina experienced at the time - the plot has the police and the military looking for the culprits in parallel and at times intersecting and overlapping. The criminological plot is enjoyable, as is the inevitable but less important romance. The aspects of the plot involving the military authorities intruding on the police investigation, riding roughshod over it, and then the eventual denouement, however, feel incoherent and fairly contrived. Whatever one thinks of the Argentinian military dictatorship (I don't really care) the brutal behavior by members of the military doesn't necessarily have an apparent internal logic and partly really seems contrived. If you need to kill time and want to see a bit of Argentina, why not?