El custodio

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.

Do you enjoy being transported to the scene? If you answer 'yes, I like to be transported to -say- Wonderland', then you should go somewhere else. This movie develops in the painful, ordinary, real world. Most people will find this movie annoying and somewhat boring. Some of us will regard it as an experience on its own. Rubén's some minister's minder, a bodyguard. His own life must leave room, be replaced by minister's. His life revolves around the minister, must follow him everywhere he goes, must wait for him while he's at work. Does nothing but waiting for him, reminding us of some kind of dog provided with some sort of self-awareness, feeling how left aside he is. His life's worth nothing. And that's where the point of the movie is. The goal is to make you experience his life, to share a piece of such empty existence. Julio Chávez (Rubén, the bodyguard) is a superb actor. I'm impressed by his ability to perform with everything except words. He doesn't need to talk to transmit feelings. And I've recently seen him on stage performing a word-based comedy, and he proved -to me- to be extremely ductile and flexible. He uses every "tool" available for his performance. You're warned. This movie deserves a 9 out of 10 for performance, 9 out of 10 in terms of psychological study. The only thing I didn't like is the final twist of the story. The rest is quite enjoyable. Julio Chávez... you're awesome!

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.

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!

"Extraño" is the name of the film I saw last year with Julio Chávez in the starring role. Directed by Santiago Loza, it followed the life of a mysterious man and the woman he fell in love with. At eighty minutes or so, the picture seemed too pretentious and desperate to achieve its hour and twenty minutes of duration…With a heavy and repetitive piano as the soundtrack, "Extraño" has a lot of similarities with Rodrigo Moreno's "El Custodio".

It's definitely a less pretentious project, but nevertheless risky. It's hard to get people and critics to like this type of contemplative cinema today, mostly in Argentina. Because contemplation is the best word that suits "El Custodio"; a very strong observation of a minister's (Osmar Nuñez) bodyguard's life. This man is Rubén, a character more silent than Chávez' "Extraño" and "Un oso rojo" together.

If you remember well, Rubén was also the name of the actor's role in the latter movie, a fabulous tale by Adrián Caetano. However, this Rubén required more commitment from the genius, because the mesmerizing portrayal is focused on the patience and the body movement almost completely…Truly; his character barely speaks.

There we arrive to the director's script, which shows the minister Chávez protects discussing politic issues that we don't even pay attention to; since Moreno's writing is more about the environment than about the situation. To be honest, nothing really deep happens in the movie; everything is routine as the main character's life, except for a visit to a country house, where the minister invites a French politician and asks Rubén (who draws) to make a portrait of him. "Very good", they tell him. "Thank you", he says, and he leaves.

Moreno's direction is also about the environment. The man's picture has the biggest count of still shots I'll probably see this year. The repeated frames of Chávez drinking water and following the minister everywhere got him recognition in the festival of Berlin and a lot of nominations to Argentina's most important awards.

What happened is that Moreno's father in-law became a minister, so he decided to join his bodyguards on their daily activities, filming them. "The bodyguards follow the minister; they don't know where he is going…They don't care", Moreno says in a short documentary about "El Custodio". "What happens inside their minds? What do they feel? This is what this movie is about".

The ending is as mythic as the rest of the movie. Something to think about for a while and maybe watch the slow film one more time.