Customer Reviews

Terrorismo the Wolf

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"El Lobo" is a tense, fast paced thriller from Spain based on the true story of Mikel "Txema" Lejarza (Eduardo Noriega), a Basque man with a young family, who finds the direction of his life irrevocably altered when he does a favor for a friend.

The film is well made and well acted. The director uses a framing device in which the film actually begins near the end of the story and then goes back in time to reconstruct how this young man inadvertently became "El Lobo" an undercover agent involved with the ETA (bloody Basque separatist movement) during the mid-seventies.

Awakened in the middle of the night by a knock on the door, Txema agrees to allow a couple of ETA members to hide out in his apartment for a few hours. Although he is reluctant to let these men into his home, he knows it would be worth his life to say "no."

From his uninvited guests, Txema learns that the ETA has targeted one of his neighbors for death because that man, a taxi driver, prevented a couple of kids from stealing a car. The kids were ETA members and now the taxi driver has been accused of being an informant against the group and a traitor against their movement for independence from Spain.

Txema makes an unsuccessful effort to warn the taxi driver. He is picked up by the police in a general round up. When the authorities discover Txema is the man who attempted to warn the victim, they see in him a small crack in previously impenetrable ETA and the tight knit Basque community who shield them. Ricardo (José Cornoado), the commissioner of the Spanish secret service makes Txema an offer he can't refuse to infiltrate the ETA and provide them information about the group's leaders and member movements.

There is danger everywhere in this movie. The ETA members show no sentimentality when committing murders and bombing targets when they perceive it might further their cause. The police are portrayed as equally ruthless. Both organizations willingly torture and kill their own members who get out of line. Eduardo Noriega gives a riveting performance as a man who can only rely on himself as he is caught between these two violent groups. José Cornoado is chilling as the commissioner who is willing to put his career interests ahead of everything else.

The Region 1 DVD release is in Spanish with English subtitles. There are no special features other than scene selection. (The previous Region 1 & 4 DVD release is in Spanish but does NOT have English subtitles.)

Highly recommended.

Una de las mejores peliculas en exponer el movimiento ETA de una manera realistica y personal contrastando percepciones sociopoliticas extremistas con individualistas y humanistas. Las actuaciones de todos en el elenco compuesto de Eduardo Noriega, Patrick Bruel, José Coronado y la francesa Mélanie Doutey son esplendidos. Lo unico perturbador es la peluca rubia de Eduardo Noriega que en uno de sus camuflajes le hace brillar en todas las penumbras de sus escondites. PERO AUN ASI, MAGNIFICA!