Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very good thriller that follows the Spanish tradition, September 8, 2004
While I was watching this movie there was one thing I could not get out of my head: it looks as if the script had been written by Arturo Perez-Reverte. This in itself means considerable praise for the director and screenplay writer Mateo Gil, who adapted a novel by Juan Bonilla, since Perez-Reverte is one of my favorite authors. Before discussing other aspects of the film, I must say that I did not notice any of the problems mentioned by other reviewers regarding the quality of the DVD. I am not an expert in technology, so the reason for this may be that my DVD player adapts better than others to different formats, but I really do not know.
Simon Cardenas, played by Eduardo Noriega is a writer suffering from writer's block, who in the meantime works creating crosswords for a newspaper in Seville. At the start of the last Holy Week of the millennium he gets a strange message on his answering machine. The caller requests that he uses a particular word in a set place in the next crossword puzzle or there will be consequences for Simon's friends and family. The word in question is "Adversario", and Simon decides to play along; but this leads to a series of attacks starting with the release of Sarin, a poisonous gas, inside a church.
Simon decides to start investigating and searching for the source of the attacks, and that is how he meets Maria, the journalist that is in charge of the investigation for the newspaper. From then on, things get really interesting, when more attacks are noticed, and Simon and Maria get involved in the action. Also, Simon's roommate (Toad) starts acting weird and has some suspicious items in his possession, leading to a certain level of paranoia in Simon. Whether this is justified or not, only time can tell.
An interesting script and reasonably good performances make this an enjoyable movie. If you like to discover new places, the impeccable sights of the city of Seville will give the movie and added flare. For those of you that are used to American thrillers, this film may provide a break from the norm. If you have read authors like Perez-Reverte, you know what I mean, since in the Spanish tradition, you do not always find the extremely twisted plots or the consistent happy endings you see in American films. Whether you will get these elements in this movie or not is for you to find out.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Three stars for a movie, and negative 5 for the DVD quality, June 2, 2004
This is a first well made film by Mateo Gil, Amenabar's cameraman and close friend. I give the movie 3 stars, because if you have been in Sevilla during Holly Week and its pandemonium you would relate to the film, not in a negative way but in its folklore and Sevilla's allure. The narrow streets of el Barrio Santa Cruz, the Cathedral, and the Plaza de Toros la Maestranza are wondrous sites. Yet, due to the quality of this video it all collapses, so No One Knows Anything with this dvd rendition.The film is a thriller, slow paced at first and then it picks-up. One has to understand Spain's budget constraints, lack of "Hollywood Style Studios" to get into this film. So one must suspend ones disbelief in this film and enjoy its ambience and dialogue. The acting is superb with European Spanish international actors, Eduardo Noriega (Open your Eyes [the original film where Vanilla Sky failed], Thesis, Warriors [Guerreros]), Jordi Molla (Blow, Bad Boys II, and The Alamo) Natalia Verbeke (The other Side of the Bed, Son of the Bride) and Paz Vega (Sex and Lucia, The other Side of The Bed, Carmen.) The Venevision DVD IS a ripoff of Spain's PAL version. The sound and video quality is horrible, and I would even question the legality of this Venevision production company, since it is altering the original from Sogepaq PAL films. The original dvd has many other hidden features, such as playing the game. Finally, it is my judgment, that until Venevision International DVD/VHS versions cleans up their practices of bad reproduction quality, I would recommend stiring away from them. Buy as others have said, the original DVD from Spain (they are afordable). Go to www.elcorteingles.es or www.fnac.es and order it, it will take a while to arrive. And yes, you can play them in todays regionless dvd players such as Daewoo, Apex and Cyberhome. The Spanish film industry will thank you and you will also discover Spanish films with all the goodies, French, English, Catalan, Spanish tracks and/or subtitles, wide screen, or full. Thus, you will end up Knowing Something for Nothing.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good Spanish Thriller, Marred by Lackluster DVD, August 18, 2003
The superhandsome Eduardo Noriega, who improbably looks like a combination of Peter Gallagher and Benicio Del Toro, stars as a crossword-puzzle writer for a newspaper in Sevill, Spain, depressed over his own perceived mediocrity as a novelist. One day he receives a cryptic message in his answering machine that the next crossword puzzle he is supposed to run in the paper must include the word gadversario.h Meanwhile, Sevill preparing for a citywide parade for the Holy Week is struck by a series of bizarre murders of the clergy, which eventually escalate into full-blown terrorism. I sort of hoped that it would be a cerebral whodunit, maybe a little like MEMENTO, but it rather disappointingly turned into a Hitchcockian gwrongly accusedh thriller, with showy special effects thrown in. It is slickly made, for sure, and is never boring, but it somewhat falls short of the level of artistry displayed by Alejandro Amanebar or Guillermo Del Toro. Still, it will be a pleasant diversion to those looking for a good thriller with exotic locales and beautiful women. And I am sure we will see the North American cult of Eduardo Noriega develop soon. This guy's got charisma! FYI, he also stars in Guillermo Del Toro's DEVIL'S BACKBONE and Alejandro Amanebar's ABRE LOS OJOS (OPEN YOUR EYES, badly remade as VANILLA SKY) and TESIS, all available in Region 1 DVDs. I think I would have enjoyed the film more if DVD presentation was a little better. At least on my players, the transfer looked rather dupy, as if cribbed from an old VHS. The colors were seriously muted, details were fuzzy. The audio was even worse, full of cracks and hiss.
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