2023-10-28 20:03:53
After its premiere in Cannes and a successful tour of festivals, The criminals arrives in theaters generating many expectations, especially because the film written and directed by Rodrigo Moreno will be the Argentine representative for the Oscar for Best International Film.
Moreno began his career in the late 1990s, at the time when what is known as New Argentine Cinema was being born. He first made group films (Bad time y Rest), until in 2006 he premiered The custodian, his first film as a solo director. Then they continued A mysterious world (2011), Reimon (2014) and the documentary A provincial city (2017).
That is, the director took six years (from his last film) to make The criminals (with a pandemic involved), in which he amalgamates in just over three hours the two conceptions of cinema that run through his filmography: on the one hand, the French police film and certain classic national and genre cinema, such as that of Hugo Fregonese (with echoes of his Just a criminal) and that of Fabián Bielinsky; on the other, the New Argentine Cinema, with its aesthetics and style.
The film consists of two parts and, from the beginning, Moreno outlines a story with the duplicate, with the two exact copies: Morán and Román (notice the anagram) are two bank employees whose routine is killing them. Morán, played by Daniel Elías from Salta, is the one who decides to steal money from the bank to live the rest of his life without having to work.
After consummating the crime, Morán summons Román (Esteban Bigliardi) in a bar to ask him to keep the money until he is released from prison, because he has decided to turn himself in as part of the plan, since he will not be locked up for more than three and a half years. . And he proposes that they split the money when they leave, to live in peace without having to go to work anymore.
Moreno resolves this entire first part with enviable economy: the robbery does not dwell on details and is not particular about the logic of the plan, Morán simply steals the money and Román keeps it in his apartment.
The escape to Córdoba
The second part of The criminals It is located in the landscape that characterizes the New Argentine Cinema, which Moreno takes advantage of to launch his pauses, his relaxed scenes of the landscape of the Cordoban mountains and his humorous performances with gags that are not very effective but that help the story. pass without problems. Moreno builds a plot about the search for freedom while the characters live, and while they remain prisoners of the same cause.
A The criminals another important element is incorporated: the album Pappo’s Blues Vol. 1, in which it is Where is freedoma song that provides the backbone and gives meaning to the story, and thus manages to synthesize the urban and the rural, with two characters who have the same life, and with secondary characters who share the duplicate, such as that of Germán De Silva, who plays Del Toro and Garrincha.
Despite wanting to make a big film at all costs (that talks about life, freedom, the prison that is money), Moreno knows how to accompany his excessive narrative ambition with a story that flows like the years that have to flow. endure the protagonists. And it is not a little.
To see
The criminals
(Argentina/Brazil/Luxembourg/Chile, 2023)
Comedy
Rating: Very good
Script and direction: Rodrigo Moreno. List: Daniel Elias, Esteban Bigliardi, Margaret Molfino, Germán De Silva, Mariana Chaud, Gabriela Saidon, Cecilia Rainero, Javier Zoro, Lalo Rotaveria, Laura Paredes, Iair Said, Fabian Houses, Augustine Toscano and Adriana Aizemberg. Photography: Inés Duacastella and Alejo Maglio. Duration: 189 minutes. Suitable for people over 13 years old. In theaters.
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#Commentary #Criminals #Freedom