INCREDIBLE! Suspenseful, tragic, heart-wrenching, and beautiful story

Rating: 10/10 (24 May 2011)

This is a brilliant thriller set in Buenos Aires that is centered on a rape/murder case. Detective, Esposito, has returned home twenty-five years after the incident to write a novel about the crime, resolved to find and carry out justice this time. The movie combines suspense, tension, shock, and romance in a way that could easily result in a choppy and compartmentalized plot, but rather each theme and tone compliments the others and results in a complex and intricate story.
"El secreto de sus ojos" deals heavily with the theme of lost time and wasted opportunities either based on variables beyond the characters' control or characters' crippling inhibitions. The movie switches between flashbacks from twenty-five years ago and "today" thus reestablishing the characters', especially Esposito's, regrets that have haunted him for nearly half of his life. We see that Esposito has been in love with his co-worker, Irene since the first time he laid eyes on her twenty-five years ago and later we learn that he had a chance to be with her when he instead fled his life that to him was only full of failure. Regarding the unresolved homicide case, Esposito had found the rapist and murderer and obtained a verbal confession only days before the judge decided to let the criminal walk free. After repeatedly trying and failing to correct the injustice, Esposito flees, dejected, in search of a new life in an attempt to forget the unresolved life he is leaving behind.
The movie BEGGS the question to the characters and the audience, "what is justice?" As unresolved as Esposito's life was, is the answer to this question.