Reviews

This film is 50 minutes too long. It has some boring parts that do not build up characters or plot.

Though it's gory in a good sense, the entire movie emanates an aura of lack of credibility. Hell, I even laughed at some scenes that were no comedy! If someone can tell me how a 50 kg girl with a frail structure can carry an unconscious man of 80 kilos and then rise him over the bathtub without anyone to help her...

Another thing I did not liked was that the bad guys really stole the show when it comes to acting. The main character should have appeared as a mad woman, yet I still saw the same frail girl until the end, while the bad guys did a rather good job as victims.

Overall, this is a passable movie for those who have the stomach for it. Just skip the boring parts and you have around 50 minutes of real action. Just 3 stars.

This is a story about a world full of psychopaths and of sheep-like victims that have no survival instincts. Is the story credible? From what I have seen in the news bulletins or read in the newspapers, it can be worse than this.

I was unable to feel sympathy for the victims in this movie because not only they were stupid, but also wimpy. The dog is a symbol of their flimsiness: a big German shepherd, perfectly trained, who barks a lot but does not bite and gets killed by a golf club hit. Pathetic. Even a kitten would have put a better fight. OK, the woman allowed the young man into the house, but that is not the point. The point is that when the man knew something was wrong with the boys...you just don't slap the aggressor. Only prostitutes do that when they squabble for the best place to expose their merchandise. If you have to touch the aggressor, you do it with the fist, in such a manner that he does not get up from the floor. OK, the film goes on, the kid escapes from the house and cannot jump over the gate. When I was his age, I could climb straight trees using only their bark for support. A gate like that would have been a piece of cake for a boy that did something else with his butt other than sit on the couch playing video-games for years. FFD...FFD...the 2 aggressors leave the area just like that, leaving the victims in the house, alive. No matter how crazy he is, a criminal always wants to escape. What if that mobile phone would have worked? This part of the script does not stand. No criminal would leave himself vulnerable to so many variables. And a few scenes later, the woman gets caught by the evil guys. I can't speak for others, but if I am in the middle of a road and someone drives a car in my direction, I can identify it 1 mile before it reaches me. I know the headlights, the silhouette, the humming of the engine. I can recognize it from 100 cars of the same type. The woman gets caught by the baddies that were driving the family car. Pathetic. And in the end, when the victims realize their fate, instead of becoming uncooperative and raging with fury, they just do what the murderers tell them to do. Even if they know they will still die. Can something be more pathetic than that?

The 2 villains in this movie are like 2 karate instructors. Sure, they can hurt you during the training, but you will learn something from them. You cannot be mad on your instructor. Have you learned something from this movie?

Someone commented about this movie as being "without clichés". In fact this is the part of the picture I didn't liked. The plot is somewhat predictable: the girl on a crusade to uncover the murderer, the geeky helper, the teacher involved, the lover who turns to be the villain. There are some plot gaps also: there have been dozens of murders and we don't see any policeman during 99% of the film. If those 200 tapes of snuff mentioned by Chema in the basement scene are 200 murders, the whole goddamn Spanish police should have swarmed the city. When Bosco has Angela tied to the chair, she has a knife in her hands and she uses it to cut the rope. How did he tied her hands without noticing she was holding a knife? A man who supposedly killed many victims should be a smart killer, not a dumb one. And the greatest and most annoying cliché is one that has been haunting the final scenes of such movies for decades: the victim wounds the aggressor, yet instead of quickly going for the kill, the victim tries to run away, leaving the aggressor on the floor, wounded, but perfectly capable of going in pursuit.

I vote 7 for this picture, which is a good note, because it has solid acting and it is thrilling, like it should be.

This movie is a comedy, no doubt about it: is has comic stereotypes. It's romanced. I laughed. But this film also has epic dimensions, even if they are imaginary. Over the millenia, we are the witnesses of a new Exodus. God leads His people out of harm's way once again. Moses is now a young lunatic, but in his madness he is wiser than all others.

The fate of the Jews links at one point with that of the Gypsies. It had to: both are known in history for their thirst for freedom, both had their Exodus(from Egypt to Canaan; from India to the far corners of Europe), both died heavily in the Nazi concentration camps. For all of them who died in the death-camps, this movie is a prison break: it is their share of freedom post-mortem given. They deserved to escape and to reach the Promised Land, but history allows this only in our imagination: they died in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Buchenwald, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, Natzweiler and in many other. Everyone has the right to try to reach a Promised Land, or a Moby Dick to hunt, or a Holy Grail to find: because they were denied such rights in reality, this imaginary Exodus brings justice even if it's late. This is the main idea of the film: justice for the innocents.