Torrente, le bras gauche de la loi

Just bought and seen the dvd (dirt cheap) though I never heard of it. Had the same experience with works like Almodovar (Todo Sobre Mi madre, Carne Tremular) and Amenabar (Abre Los Ojos). None of them were disappointing (understatement). First I thought It would be a movie like Bad Lieutenant , this time on too much sangria. From the right beginning really funny and a-moral. But hey, it turned out to be a true movie after all.

Spanish auteur Santiago Segura, who wrote, directed and stars in this film, creates a decent if overly dark comedy about corruption. Segura claims to be a member of the Madrid police force, but his outlandish behavior – he drinks before going on duty and forces his wheelchair-bound father to beg to increase his income – hardly demonstrates the qualities required of a representative of the law. When sleazy nymphomaniac Neus Asensi moves in next door, he befriends her cousin, extremely nerdy Javier Cámara. When Segura and his new sidekick accidentally discover a drug ring run through a Chinese restaurant, Cámara calls in his loser friends to help. As the cast gets significantly reduced in a flurry of bullets and tragedy, Segura concludes the film with a few plot twists and the unsettling suggestion that sometimes people are as bad as they seem. An inherently unfunny story gets injected with a dose of morbid wit through Segura's approach to the characters. His attitude toward humanity appears quite dark. Everyone in the film either takes advantage of others or finds himself exploited, and no one seems to wind up punished for their wrongdoings. True, a number of maniacal drug dealers get offed, but so do all of Cámara's awkward, endearing friends. Segura follows few conventions in his portrayal of the world of his deluded cop. Chus Lampreave, familiar from several of Pedro Almodóvar's films, has a nice role as Cámara's mother.

Beware this comedy isn't palatable to all taste, but after watched it firstly on TV cable and stayed disoriented for a while, such foolishness, anyhow it was so fresh and inventive, an anti-hero character, who have countless bad behaviors, drunkard, racist, disgusting, filthy, obscene, we can thing the worst thing that he will be fits perfectly, however he hooked the audience in such shallow ground, Torrente is fantastic and deliberately bad to catch us toward him, in fact the viewers in such environment don't mind anymore, it's just a black comedy, we realize that it is a farce, then who care what's coming to next, so Santiago Segura conceived a harmless, but appealing character, in fact amazed us entirely, even politically incorrect to nowadays patterns, great box office in Spain that spread to the world!!!

Resume:

First watch: 2009 / How many: 2 / Source: Cable TV-DVD / Rating: 7.5

Being Spanish as I am I find this movie amazingly funny (i've watched it a million times :P). But I must admit it might not be as funny for everyone, if you're not Spanish you'll probably find it quite stupid and boring, why? Because many of the jokes are referred to things everyone in Spain knows about but people from other parts of the world don't, some of the characters are quite... infamous in Spain and that makes them funny... and many other details as these. Torrente is something of a Spanish Homer Simpson / Peter Griffin, and everyone finds those characters funny because everyone knows quite a lot about the US and American celebrities, but with Spain... I'd say not.

Jaw-droppingly hilarious from beginning to end, the brilliant Santiago Segura delivers one of the funniest films ever made about an unbelievably likable racist, homophobic, misogynistic, gloriously non-PC, ex-cop.

You really have to see it to truly appreciate its unique sense of lusty invention and bravura staging.

Segura's Torrente is a filthy, fat bastard who partners with an insufferable nerd to crack a drug smuggling operation. But the plot merely provides Segura with a framework for his non-stop barrage of brilliant gags and set pieces.

Torrente's attempt to seduce his nerd partner's slutty sister is hilarious, as are Torrente's off-the-cuff comments about all women wanting it up the rear and his lecture on how washing your hands before you take a leak shows greater respect for your penis.

There are so many gems in this movie it's impossible to catalog them all. Another corker, which occurs near the film's climax, has the kidnapped slut sister dropping to her knees to enthusiastically fellate her captor. When the nerd expresses concern that his sister is being "forced" to have oral sex, Torrente quips: "I don't think she's being forced too hard."

The sequel, while still very funny, doesn't have the rough, crude edge of the original.

Sublime!