Crimes Temporais

"Time is a storm in which we are all lost." William Carlos Williams

"Time flies around here," says Hector's (Karra Elejalde) girl friend before time gets warped maliciously when he goes back in a time machine for about an hour. The ironic statement could as well apply to this intelligent sci fi, Time Crimes, that actually tries to show what confusion will reign if we ever do time travel.

While this Spanish thriller is reminiscent of Memento's playing with time and memory and various other time travel fictions, it lacks psycho-philosophical depth (notwithstanding the Hitchcock relevance of the hero using binoculars to see a fetching lass). Even more, character exploration is secondary to the puzzle of time traveling. The film, concerned with the tricky interplay of cause and effect in the travel, could have given more to the ethical-humanistic implications of voyeurism and bending nature to our will.

Its atmosphere is creepy enough, a black and white effect from muted color, a semi-real world where appearance and reality collide, not unlike this time-bound life itself without the machine. Its heroine, a beautiful nude played by Barbara Goenaga, suggests those Freudian chambers of our hearts where desire and violence seem only a door opening or time change away.

In an age of "system restore," where we can set our computers back in time, altering the continuum to expunge viruses and such makes the premise of Timecrimes seem almost possible. The ramifications from our computer restore are usually saving time and money; from a time machine may come a chance to upset the balance of nature, to throw ourselves into a primitive state of lawlessness. At least that's how writer director Nacho Vigalondo sees it, and his film theorizes.

Nice to have a thoughtful movie these days.

One of the common issues with time-travel movies is that they are filled with holes in the story, things that you never get to know how happened or why they did happened in the first place.

This movie is perfect in that sense, the plot is squared and every small detail has a meaningful reason to exist so in a way is mathematically perfect.. Which leaves you with a rewarding feeling but on the other hand if you understand the plot you can solve the mystery 3/4 down the movie and the last minutes are just obvious.

But this is a great movie.. Thats why it leaves you wondering what would it had been if the plot were more ambitious and more factors had been involved in the equation. Perhaps more characters and more interaction between them.. Who knows! You just want more!

It's very hard to review "Los cronocrímenes" without spoiling the fun of watching the movie and seeing how the different stories within the main plot outline keep unraveling ever so intelligently. Let's just say that it all starts out with a man watching through his binoculars and spotting something that catches his eye. He follows his curiosity, and that will be the start of some extremely unusual, mysterious, and intriguing events involving this man, a mysterious stalker with his head wrapped in a pink bandage, a naked girl in the woods, and a young scientist.

"Los cronocrímenes" is a terrific movie, one that was made with a low budget, a reduced cast, and very few settings. It combines sci-fi/fantasy, mystery, action, and also sprinkles of comedy -I found myself laughing out loud more than once while watching this. It's a twisted, tragic, cynical sense of humor that I find very fitted to the Spanish way of being and general look on life.

You may enjoy "Los cronocrímenes" for what it is, taking it at face value, and enjoying the twists and turns (and even if you think you've got it figured out, it keeps the ability to surprise you all along). You may also take a deeper look into it. Each viewer sees a different story and message in a movie; for me, personally, besides an extremely entertaining and thoughtful mystery and action movie, "Los cronocrímenes" offers good insight into the human soul, our deepest and darkest motivations for things, and how the line between good and evil is ever so blurry.

This movie proves what Hollywood does not practice. A great movie (like this one) does not need: famous name actors, good-looking/sexy protagonists, stupendous sets, expensive special effects, gratuitous violence, & violent shocks to be a successful, entertaining, and provocative movie, which this is in every respect. All it needs is good writing, capable direction, plausibility in terms of premises and plot turns, and decent acting. This has it all. And it's a great movie. The actors are all average looking. The sets look like a normal environment. The special effects are nothing special at all. And yet, there is not a dull moment in this extraordinarily good film. Saw it at the Cleveland International Film Festival this year. It stood out from the crowd as an exceptional film

Quite often, time-travelling films are too pompeous and full of complex moral dilemmas. This treasure has nothing of a sort. It is, finally, a story about "little man" in unusual circumstances of time travelling. A man, who isn't very bright, who isn't destined to save the world, who isn't parcticularly "good" or "bad". This - this is what I genuinely enjoyed whatching. There's no higher power behind all of this, nor great or malicious power - no, the hero is driven mostly by his own actions, worldview and lack of rationality. Because of that, more interesting things become when he starts falling into the bottomless pit of wrong choices, inevitable circumstances and despair. Hector is very much usual - and that's what makes the story so tense and interesting.