Abutres

Dark, gloomy underbelly of Buenos Aires. Dirty, orange lights on even dirtier streets. Drugs, alcohol and the dire consequences. " Carancho" or "The Vulture", takes us to the world we'll rather never know about it. Tragic car crashes, broken glass and pints of blood soaked up by the filthy asphalt. And there are the people, those whose mission is to save and patch up, and those who prey upon the bereft and shocked. There is always money to be made on death and tragedy. Two broken imperfect creatures, desperately clinging to ever so elusive hope for tenderness and human touch. Too much to ask? Perhaps not, but there is nothing fair about this spinning madhouse of a planet we inhabit. Some have it all, and most just roam around hoping and waiting.

This movie is as perfect as any contemporary movie can be perfect nowadays. The uncompromising plot shows the very somber underside of the insurance business in all its corruption, corruption found in any other big business, as we are getting to know more and more every day just by reading the world news.

They show it really as mafia business.

Corrupt lawyers, corrupt police, corrupt doctors. Everybody and his grandmother is corrupt!! A very dark, very stark movie.

Quite-quite depressing to watch, but so very well done that it grabs you from the very beginning and doesn't let go. Road traffic in the big, polluted city, is the major protagonist, the core of the story, and it is pack and parcel of many outdoor scenes where the interminable string of vehicles running with their noise and pollution are a permanent reminder that every few minutes, inevitably, some accident will occur.

The music is so perfect following the story that just now I realize that there must have been music, because I don't remember any!!

The traffic accident victims, their pain, their waiting for an ambulance lying on the bare cement of the street, maybe with broken bones, in awful pain, any minute of waiting time an atrocious agony, and the ambulance taking forever to arrive..., to me those were intolerable scenes because I was a victim of accidents too and the whole nightmarish thing came back to my mind.

All the hospital scenes were PERFECT.

And the dismal public hospitals, with stained doors (dirt), lack of supplies, lack of doctors and nurses...,and the few available (for too many patients), dead tired without sleep due to so much overwork and underpaid.

No wonder then that they could make horrible mistakes! It couldn't be more depressing. Maybe it's my problem, but I prefer to see a comedy nowadays.

The length of this movie is PERFECT, not a minute too long, not a minute too short. The editing and the camera work just couldn't be better. All the actors sheer perfection too.

Only one question bothers me when it comes to script logic. At the very end, who was driving the white pick up? Because as far as I understood, Darin's character didn't have reliable friends to count on. It's the only flaw that I could notice in the whole movie.

Excellent, a truly excellent film.

CARANCHO ('Vulture' or 'a bird of prey; an animal that attack and feed on wounded animals') is a disturbing film from the opening sequences until the end. Before any story begins we are given the information (superimposed over black and white photographs for broken glass and bodies on a street) about the number of automobile accidents and deaths (in excess of 8,000) each year, the leading cause of deaths in Argentina. This grim fact has produced an even more grim industry - ambulance chasing lawyers who follow and even at times stage accidents in order to collect from insurance and scam the real victims and the insurances companies too. This industry requires the participation of doctors, paramedical personnel and police on the take. Every aspect of this horrendous situation is played out in this tersely written (Alejandro Fadel, Martín Mauregui, Santiago Mitre, and Pablo Trapero who also directs). It is a tough film to watch but does serve to alert the audience to a major crime industry that though set in Buenos Aires, Argentina is prevalent probably throughout the world.

Sosa (Ricardo Darín) is a lawyer who has lost his license form some unstated reason who is now working for a 'foundation' that falls into the category discussed above. He not only chases ambulances but also pays men to stage them so that he can collect money based on the fact that he works with the distraught families to win power of attorney for the injured or deceased, giving him access to the insurance money. His bosses are competitive and Sosa is repeatedly attacked physically a la mob style for his failure to perform. Sosa meets Luján (Martina Gusman), a beautiful young doctor who is at the beginning of her career and must work emergency rooms and ride in ambulances to administer to the injured or ill in order to gain experience to become a respected physician. They meet over an accident - Luján is giving aid to a victim and Sosa is planning to use the victim in his crime racket. Both Sosa and Luján seem to have occult senses of responsibility and ethics but life has brought them to a place where they must submerge their standards in order to survive: Luján happens to be a drug addicted 'to sustain the brutality of her work' and Sosa endangers the lives of innocent people to satisfy the bosses to whom he must bow in order to survive. It is this contrast between their passion for each other and their participation in the dark crime of 'caranchos' that provides the push/pull of their relationship, resulting in an ending few will predict.

Both Darín and Gusman are outstanding in very difficult roles, but the supporting cast - Carlos Weber, José Luis Arias, Fabio Ronzano, Loren Acuña, Gabriel Almirón, and José Manuel Espeche - is equally strong in smaller roles. This is a very dark film - in story, in locale (the San Justo region of Buenos Aires), and in the fact that it all takes place at night - but it carries information we all need to note and molds that information into a suspenseful thriller that is so well paced by director Pablo Tapero that every moment is filled with meaning.

Grady Harp

In Buenos Aires, Sosa (Ricardo Darin) is a lawyer that has lost his license and works in a corrupt foundation, chasing in public hospitals and police stations victims of traffic accidents to claim their insurance rights. Dr. Lujan (Martina Gusman) is a young drug-addicted doctor that has come from the provinces and works in an ambulance and in the emergency service of a public hospital. When Sosa meets Lujan, he falls in love for her and tries to recover his license and move to the provinces to star a new life. But he is trapped to the corrupt system and the mafia does not let him go.

"Carancho" is a gloomy romance about the mafia of accident and insurance in Argentina. The story of a man that can not set free from his past and drags a young doctor to the underworld is engaging, but the irony and the dark humor of the conclusion does not work and is very disappointing. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Abutres" ("Voltures")

I consider Ricardo Darin is one of the best actors in the world. Period. He has been approached to become a "hollywood star" "a la Banderas and Bardem", but refused to. He is very OK in his native Argentina, and has been in four movies during five years. Trapero is a top-notch scriptwriter and director. Notwithstanding the emotional anxiety or even repulsion that the story itself and some scenes may convey, this is a phenomenal work of art film, cinematography, acting, direction, design and clothing. The romance between these two souls (one, dishonest, the other, weird and low self-esteem)is believable, and adds some suppleness to an otherwise very twisted and somewhat creepy story.