SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Patrick Richard After watching this film last night, i can say a couple of things that come to my mind.Has a good script, but it's "short" and therefore they make some scenes too long, with a pace too slow, to get a movie with a minimum lenght. It could been 20 min shorter, easily.The dark mood of the story is well placed: depressing and dangerous. No complaints here. They make also a good job on showing the daytime differences affecting the characters.What saves this movie is Ricardo Darin's acting and the last scenes of the movie.

dedalus7632 One thing that works in this movie is the chemistry between Sosa and Lujan, a discredited lawyer and a drug-addicted emergency room doctor with a self-destructive personality. The picture comes close to the Warner Bros. B-picture genre of the 40s, with the exception that there is no on-screen moral center. Lujan, played by Martina Gusman, quickly moves over to the dark side. Cynically, her drug addiction feels like an after-thought added by one of the writers to explain her compulsions, that go so quickly out of control. Her attraction for Sosi comes out of left field, and the drug addiction is probably an attempt to justify this, but seems over the top and unnecessarily to stack the deck against her. In any case, her habit should have been introduced earlier. The lawyer, Sosa, played by Ricardo Darin, is nasty. He goes after Lujan's assailant with uncontrolled violence and rage --far different than Bardem's understated emotional turmoil in 'Biutiful,' in a similar situation. Finally, why the incomprehensible deus-ex-machina ending? The filmmakers had a more interesting setup than I think they knew how to develop.

CarlosFacundoCornejo A good story and a good effort, hard though, but is not as good as Darin's previous hit, "El Secreto de sus ojos".The story is a real good one, a truly hard and real story, that could happen everywhere on America, and Europe, as far as i know, obviously with "the Argentinian touch", expressions and such...The movie is actually well conducted, well acted, and the scenes are pretty credible, but when we look at this movie we first thought on the previous Argentinian big screen hit, and the previous Ricardo Darin's one, and isn't even closer to the captivating story and scenes from "El Secreto de sus ojos", and i wouldn't be surprised if this one doesn't reach any Oscar nomination this year, besides from that is a truly enjoyable movie, maybe too short because the main idea could handle a few more minutes of narration and even, a few more twists.The ending of the movie is pretty predictable, (you know when you play with fire...) but is good enough to close the film.Actually i would say this movie is more than a 7 but less than an 8...in my opinion, 7.5 should have been the best rate for the movie, and the summary line "A good story, pretty enjoyable movie" but not far away than that.

abisio "Carancho" is a bird of prey; an animal that attack and feed on wounded animals. In this movie it's the pseudonym of lawyers that follow (and sometime stage) accidents in order to collect from insurance and scam the real victims (and the insurances companies too). This kind of activity requires the help of corrupt cops, doctors and lots of low level people. These of course involves crude violence, filmed with taste but shocking none less. The action was shoot mostly at night in San Justo (within Buenos Aires state), a very depressing location. This setup creates a very dark but absolutely real environment (filmed inside real hospitals and streets ) far from the artificially stylish of "DARK NIGHT". Believe me, what you see is (even when it seems absurd) is the real thing. Ricardo Darin (from the "Son of the Bride" and the Oscar winner "The Secret in her eyes") as the repented lawyer and Martina Guzman (the director's wife and a real revelation) as a drug addicted doctor give outstanding performances, but the supporting cast quite as good. Pablo Trapero (the director) was able to orchestrate an almost perfect movie (acting and locations, realistic violence, excellent camera work) with a minimum budget; but failed in the story itself ( which he wrote). The love story between the two main characters slows down the movie a bit. There are a couple of important situations left unexplained. In brief; perhaps a little more work on the history could improve this movie but is still far better and effective than 98% of movies currently in theaters.