Ceticultsot
Beautiful, moving film.
Curapedi
I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.
Kimball
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
bandw
I think that this is meant to be a meditation on fate couched in a fantasy about luck. This movie asks you to follow a tale about some people who are preternaturally lucky and about one person in particular, Sam, who is the supreme being of the lucky. Sam is so lucky that he survives many games of roulette where he gives a challenger first crack at shooting him with a six-shooter having only one empty chamber. Even if Sam has survived ten of these challenges, his odds of survival are about ten million to one. So, you have to take the premise with a grain of salt and try to just go with it. The movie is structured like reporting on a sporting event where the players bet on their luck to survive events like crossing a busy highway blindfolded, or running blindfolded through a dense forest. Those who make in through these trials intact ultimately get to face Sam and his roulette game--kind of like getting to the World Series of the lucky people. In addition there are some mystical elements thrown in, like Sam's being able to suck the luck out of someone by touching them, as if luck were a commodity of exchange. Then there are some musings on how an apparently lucky event may turn out poorly in the long run. The story was too much of an abstraction to seriously engage me.On the upside director Fresnadillo has style. Many scenes have you on the edge of your seat, like the scene that has the blindfolded men racing through the dense forest with their being sequentially taken out by hitting a tree at a dead run. Or there is a car accident that is the most chilling and realistic I have scene. And it is impossible not to flinch when someone fires in a game of roulette, as those who watched "The Deer Hunter" will attest. The story is filmed in an intricate style that interleaves the lives of four protagonists, both in real time and in flashbacks. This style works for me when everything comes together in a revelatory climax. While everything did come together in the end, I found it to be more of an anti-climax than a grand climax. The actors do well enough, but this in not the kind of movie that depends much on strong dramatic performances. As Sam, Max von Sydow is pretty much wasted, except he is good at projecting a world-weary sadness.This is the only Fresnadillo film I have seen; I am hoping he can apply his talents to better stories.
zetes
The debut feature of the man who would go on to direct 28 Weeks Later, one of the best horror films of the decade. This one is a thriller, of sorts. It has a very weird and original concept. Set in the underground world of gambling, it's about a group of people who see luck as a tangible item, that can be had, bet, transferred, taken away, what have you. The film follows the sole survivor of a plane crash as he is recruited by another man to enter this world. The king of the subculture is Max von Sydow, a holocaust survivor who is supposedly the luckiest man ever to live. Meanwhile, a female detective who also has amazing powers of luck is searching for the plane crash survivor, who was on the plane fleeing after robbing a bank. The concept is interesting, but Fresnadillo and his co-writer, Andrés M. Koppel, have a difficult time establishing it. It never stops seeming silly. It's also confusingly told and badly edited. I never really understood the role the detective played. That whole character could have been dropped, the whole bank robbery thing, too, and the film would have thankfully lost 20 to 25 minutes and been a lot more streamlined. As it is, the movie's a slog. The only decent parts are the bizarre gambling games they play. One has a gigantic, bioluminescent insect released into a dark room. Whosever head it lands on wins. The best sequence in the movie – and even it could have been greatly improved with better editing – has gamblers with their hands tied behind their backs and blindfolds. The object is to run through a forest at full speed. The last person standing, having not brained him/herself on a tree, wins. Someone needs to propose this event as a reality game show. I'm sure at least someone in Japan would produce it!
merklekranz
Like pieces on a chess board, the lucky or unlucky characters move, capture, or are lost. The movie asks the viewer to suspend his beliefs regarding random outcomes, and buy into the theory that some people can get luckier by taking luck from others, while leaving the losers unlucky. There is very little character development, and the confusing story loses steam between "games". The concept certainly is different, and that alone makes "Intacto" watchable. Marginally recommended for admirers of films that are creative but could require some patience from the viewer. A second viewing might be mandatory for even marginal comprehension. - MERK
tedg
There are a few good filmmakers alive now, ones I credit. Mostly they are distributed in accidental pools of the industry, a couple in Hong Kong, a master in Amsterdam, a few passing through Hollywood it seems. Singles here and there. But there are three film communities that when I enter them, I feel as if I am entering a magical kitchen of imagemaking shared by a single family. The blood pumping between one pair of lovers, the enhanced tongue of another, the wild creative dialog about spices among a young crowd in the corner — each of these somehow providing juices I will taste.One of these kitchens is Australian, another Canadian (oh how puzzling!). But this big saucy one is Spanish, with emissaries all over the Americas. Not every Spanish film is nourishing, but when I find one that has serious ambitions, it more often than not inherits all the smells, traditions and many of the skills of that kitchen, that world.Superficially, this is an ambitious project, with a young filmmaker whose visual skills aren't unusual, and he has been helped by a crew that pulls off most of the cinematic needs of his scenes. The techniques themselves aren't very striking.See this. It is not full of new ways of seeing story, as you find with Medem. It has no novel parallel narratives as you'll often find. But it parallels it does have, else it wouldn't be in this tradition I like so much of magical overlays of reality, up and down.What is striking is the typically Spanish shape of the thing. Folded realities, agents of fate placed among us, the narrative as game that includes a game. The tokens of the game as images and placed in images we "win." Some players as noir characters, others as filmmakers in the thing.This juxtaposition of noir-related game with gambling with images with conflating images in the film with images of the film is unique. Remember when you saw the first film of a gifted filmmaker, and began a rewarding life with a new friend? Here's one for you, a new friend. I do not think he will disappoint.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
