Perfectly fine and perfectly rounded little thriller with more grandeur-a aspirations to be what isn't quite; The Secret in Their Eyes makes the grade more often than not.

Rating: 6/10 (4 April 2011)

There can't be many actors working within Argentina, indeed the world, with a presence-come-expression, or 'tone' about his being there as there is with Ricardo Darín. The man's solemn appearance twinned with the general low-key immediacy to his being on screen is in no way an insult; on the contrary, for most of his work in terms of the characters he has played, a downcast and lonely-cut figure of an individual with some crucial decisions on his mind has seen him close to being always perfectly cast. His expression just seems sad, as if the weight of the world rests on his shoulders and there is nary a person within a hundred miles whom can help him deal with it – if we were in the film with him, we might see ourselves wanting to lend a hand. Here, that man is dropped into a film whose narrative is a weaving, twisting plot kicked off by a pretty harrowing catalyst and left to those primarily involved to stew in juices that do not involve a whole lot of justifiable help from the authorities whom operate distastefully. Here, Darín plays one of those protagonists placed on the front-line; a character who, at one point, has to literally kick away at a yapping, puppy-dog sized mutt in what you might categorise as self-defence but is an action born out of Darín's being in a place he initially should not have been. Not many protagonists in movies can kick a dog belonging to a somewhat elderly woman and still have the audience on their sides after a breaking and entering offense, even enforce a guffaw out of the whole situation: Darín can because we're on his side the moment we see him.
His character here is Benjamín Esposito, a man we first encounter in a place of dwelling all to himself as the thoughts; memories and his own envisages of what might have happened during past events he was not present at, haunt him. Now, he attempts to turn what it is he has experienced into material worthy of selling as the written word; the lack of a word processor or even a typewriter suggesting a man of a particular age, the crumpling up of several sheets of paper despite some fairly competent renditions of his work wryly hinting at a man obsessed with detail and figuring things out to their perfect denouement. The film, Argentinian set, will flick between the present day and the latter-half of the 1970s; those of whom knowledgeable of contemporary Argentinian history (or have at least caught Christopher Hampton's 2003 film Imagining Argentina on the off chance) will know that the said era was one of a distasteful nature. An ongoing case to do with the rape and murder of a young woman across the street from some construction workers that were eventually blamed plagues the past, the reunions between those predominantly involved with investigating such a case doing so for the present.
The film kicks into gear when Esposito, in the present day, visits a long-time companion from that case named Irene Hastings, played by Soledad Villamil; a woman he can still remember first laying eyes on and for whom a fair while has passed during which time he has harboured certain affections. She is a judge at the law firm at which he worked, pleasantries and niceties giving way to solemn silences when the Morales case, long-since closed from decades ago, is mentioned inducing now somewhat glum faces. Like Esposito displayed during the opening, she can be eloquent in her dictation and has a similarly high level of skill with words; the film exploring their relationship in the present day as much as it does the link they had when they worked tirelessly back in the day. The Morales case is indeed the crime revolving around the deceased young woman whose perpetrator, its seems, got away with what he did and the film flashbacks to the time and place it all unravelled so as to follow Esposito team up with an alcoholic co-worker named Pablo Sandoval (Francella) in the attempt to try and tackle the state-led enemies in order to dig out the truth.
The film is an interesting and brooding piece without ever being overtly involving; it painfully, and granted the accolades it has won, even confusingly did not necessarily strike me with quite clearly the same verve it did to many-a other. The film is a competent but plodding piece, somewhat televisual but rather plump and rounded in its neat, free-flowing causality as one thing moves onto the next and a power struggle erupts between two sides. I spent large portions of the film wandering to myself precisely what it was Darín's character did; eventually pluming for a sort of hybridised role encompassing journalism, archivist and police work. There are moments that the film leaps off of the screen and enraptures you, but do so more out of the sheer jump in aesthetical quality than anything else; take, for instance, the sweeping shot from high above a football stadium but ends in the rafters of an end behind the goal, a sequence which strikes us as the cinematic bolt-from-the-blue because it probably belongs in a better film.
Make no mistake, The Secret in Their Eyes is an able-bodied enough little investigative thriller but it is so without being overly confrontative nor particularly daring; its cat-and-mouse elements leading up to and beyond the apprehension of whom it is they assume to have committed the murder are engaging enough, but are counterbalanced by instances such as a key scene in a central relationship whose chief moment of emotional release is relegated to the status of a self-aware cliché, which still doesn't stop it being what it is. You could do a lot worse than The Secret in Their Eyes; the film is a fairly decently executed, well-meaning character study but which, frustratingly, did not strike me as much as I would have liked.