RED POINT – 9 points
Argentina, 2021
Direction and script: Nicanor Loreti
Photography: Mariano Suarez
Duration: 80 minutes
Interpreters: Demián Salomón, Marina Anghileri, Edgardo Castro, Matías Lértora, voice of Juan Palomino
Premiere in Gaumont cinema and Cine.Ar.
Argentine genre cinema learned second hand what class B is. That second hand is that of Quentin Tarantino, which does not make a genre but quotes, parody, wink, metagenre. What’s more tell storiesSure, but that’s what our filmmakers missed. They stayed with the surface, the exterior, what is most visible. Cutting off a guy’s ear while you’re dancing, getting shot and blowing some poor devil’s head off, a couple dancing galore, a class A swordswoman who turns people into human geysers. And that’s it. They didn’t even copy what came later, that’s where they got to. Kill Bill. 1 y 2. 2003. Not only do they copy the most superficial but they delay 20 years.
This is where a movie like Red pointfrom Nicanor Loretiand annuls all that insipid rubbish at a stroke, constructing a genre film with all the elements that any film must have to be good, very good or very good: always being in front of the viewer, crossing the stories that apparently do not have relationship, alternate rhythms and speeds, have a cast without a single weak point, amaze with a first class technique (one of the best that has been seen in Argentine cinema in a long time) and, of course, very black humor, short blows to the face, explosions that split the earth in two. And also, of course, characters. Presented at the latest edition of the Mar del Plata Festival, Red point it’s a shuffle and give again for the (very) black Argentine action comedy. To give some name to a genre that, like any genre, is all genres.
Everything is already in the initial sequence. A very used Dodge in the middle of a semi-desert area. A half-bored chauffeur (the little-known Damian Solomon, who smokes as if with rage, at the Bogart). While he waits for something, Diego (Salomón) listens absentmindedly to a radio program with questions and answers about the history of Racing Club (The film is not recommended for fans of the Red). Diego knows everything: from when he won the Academy the Beccar Varela Cup (?) to the complete formation of José’s team, listed at warp speed, from Agustín Mario Cejas to Norberto Raffo. “If I know more than any of these assholes”, he realizes, “why don’t I call and contest”. He calls, competes and makes his way to the prize of 200 thousand dollars no rivals in sight.
It is there that a fighter pilot literally falls from the sky, balling up against the bumper of the car. From then on, the narrative progresses acronológicointroducing new characters, joining dotted lines and reaching a box that would contain a nuclear bomb (explicit tribute to the B-class gem kiss me deadly). But it all goes to the Arsenal de Sarandí goalkeeper.
director of Diablo and the most self-indulgent Kryptonite and 27, the club of the damned, Loreti is here with all engines running. And a lot of cinematographic knowledge at stake. He does not fall into the ignorance of assuming that an action movie must necessarily operate by accumulation. Accumulation of shots, speed, characters, situations, infinitesimal duration of each plane. Quite the contrary. Let the plans last without worrying about the consumption habits of the genre viewer. Until he breaks those calm shots with a brutal montage cut. He expressively uses the background of the image, the empty spaces, brief bursts of animation, and with the help of an exceptional photographer (Mariano Suárez) he gives the desert (of San Juan?) the bronze hue of that of Sonora in Paris, Texas. The rest are the fainthearted contact man from Edgardo Castro (classic character from dark movie) and, above all, an unrecognizable Marina Anghileriin a role of impossible to kill girl, whose toughness brings to mind the remarkable Michelle Rodríguez.
And the whores! In that sense, Red point It is as Argentine as the crazy seven. The whoremaster it is the surprising Salomón, with his “La concha bien de tu madre”, plucked from a street that is not from Los Angeles, New York or Seoul, but unmistakably from here. And from here, and not from anywhere, is where Argentine genre films should come from.