O Candidato

This is without a doubt the best Spanish movie I have seen in years (and I'm Spanish). It depicts the politician corruption in an excellent way. For me, the script was really really good, the directing was 100% on point and the performances were amazing. There is an actor called Luis Zahera who I didn't even know and it gives the most credible performance in the movie (as Cabrera). He is soooooooo good. The scene at the balcony should grant him all the awards he can get in his category this year. You cannot go better than that. Impossible. Definitely a must-watch film. Go to the theater and support the crew. This is as cinema at its best.

With a slightly shaky cam, a monotonous thumping techno score and some of the best performances of this year, we are introduced to a group of Spanish politicians with a serious fraudulent past. Their arrogance and naive feeling of invincibility is soon destroyed, when all their corrupt businesses are slowly brought to the attention of the press.

The gravity of the situation only hits the audience when it hits the characters: too late. In over their head with only a couple of options to save their own skin, they are put before several moral questions that will have you bite your finger nails the whole ride.

Manuel, the main character, seems a true human being that could have walked out of a real life politics debate for all we know. Antonio de la Torre's performance is out of this world! But not only he deserves credit for his amazing acting. No one ever misses a note and the result is a film full of conflicting personal relationships that are realistic in a rather scary way.

The music is a bit of a bummer though... The techno-beats never build up towards a finale, while the movie itself is a thrilling rollercoaster that ends in a frontal collision with a brick wall. This - as I already mentioned - monotonous score doesn't improve the movie one bit.

But the directing by Rodrigo Sorogoyen is compelling. He made a political scandal into a grand fight between rivals and friends. There is no violence. But I held my breath for the complete final hour. The ending was a bit too suden for my taste though.

Yet, I cannot stress this enough: it was rousing, it was absolutely riveting.

This movie is brutal. From second one, it grips you in its story line about politics and corruption, with a tight and breathless script and amazing acting (de la Torre has an intensity that transpires from the screen, and here gives us again a bravura performance) and doesn't let go till the last very last frame. It may be *just another movie about corrupt politicians and their love of money and power, but it is so magnificently done, so beautifully shot, and so angry, that you won't be able to take your eyes from the screen. Watch it.

I went to see this wonderful movie with a minimum of information, as usual: a Spanish movie directed by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, with Antonio de la Torre. Nothing more. De facto, with a very positive a priori. During the first minutes, the atmosphere is a Dolce vita full of show-offs, with yachts, rolex, penthouses, prawns orgies and tutti quanti, in a universe of corrupt politicians. A scandal burgeons and one of them will immediately be designed for a sacrifice, in order to preserve the party and the government. Thus, in this extemporary exercise of musical chairs, the victim is Manuel López-Vidal, the main protagonist interpreted by Antonio de la Torre. The movie is quickly and suddenly transformed into a descent into the abyss, or rather a breathless race against the clock until an ultimate and terrific confrontation that might easily be considered as a merciless fight between the two last gladiators still standing within a Roman arena, with a combativeness boosted to the extreme, for the delight of a bloodthirsty audience.

The film deals with corruption through the eyes of a man for whom one feels almost empathy, despite the absence of sympathy. Thus, if this film addresses corruption without really judging it, the focus is primarily on the ability to survive, like manifold other movies, in fundamentally different contexts: Ayka (2018), Gravidade (2013), A Estrada (2009), Extermínio (2002), Amargo Pesadelo (1972), ... Thus, with El reino / The Realm, we may see what a corrupt politicien is ready to do to save his own skin. No matter what! As a conclusion, despite a few idle times, this movie is excellent.

What an unbelievable actor is Antonio de la Torre! He has such a natural way of acting. The film itself was fantastic too.