A decent but overrated movie

Rating: 5/10 (22 April 2010)

I think Campanella was never able to decide whether to make a police thriller, a suspense drama, a romantic comedy or a comedy of manners, then decided to stick in a bit of everything. What emerged is a hodgepodge that considerably reduces the effectiveness of the film. There are constant and annoying changes of tone: you get into the oppressive atmosphere of courts and then you are transported to a comedy scene in a countryside town. The action takes place in two units of time, the 70s and the year 2000, but interest is almost entirely concentrated in the past. The current scenes are just forced dialog between Darin and Villamil that at no time justify the revisionism on which the whole story is based. To add confusion, real events are interspersed with imaginary situations from the head of Darin writing his novel.
Plot
A court employee retires and decides to write a novel about a court case in which he participated during the 70s. This is loosely tied to a very feeble and uninteresting love story between himself and a colleague. Both the court case and his love story are unfinished business he somehow decides to deal with now, although we are never told why. In fact, the motivation of any of the characters for what they do is hardly clear ever.
The crime story has a good hook up to halfway through the movie, when the case is solved, without too many turns in fact, and it becomes clear that the murderer is Isidoro GÃ³mez. The interrogation scene, on top of the gratuitous male nudity bit, is not an ode to finesse. So instead of punching him stupid until he confesses (after all that's what they did with the other two poor fellows before), Hastings decides to get him pumped? Wow. Psychopaths are usually devilishly clever and, by definition, unbreakable psychologically, so you would expect him to just play along under duress. Here they just got lucky and caught the stupidest psychopathic murderer of all time.
IMO the film climaxes at the scene where Gomez, now free and doing free-lance work for the paramilitary forces of the government (hint to Argentina history here, very obscure to foreigners though), enters the elevator with the other two and forks out a gun. This sequence is great. From here on it is difficult to imagine what twists and turns might top this, because the several story lines of narrative converge neatly with historical framework. But no, Campanella's weak spot for Hollywood comes out. He switches the focus to the romantic side plot, and starts to add turns to the crime story to use it as a catalyst for the development of the romance between Esposito and Hastings. This affair has less credibility than that of Anakin Skywalker and Natalie Portman and really does not come even close to generate the same interest as the investigation of rape followed by murder. From this point onward there's an abuse of closeups on and references to eyes ("the love I saw in the eyes of this dude", etc). Okay, we get it, the movie is called The Secret In Their Eyes, you do not need to hit us with a pan on the head with it, genius. Darin, who for those who have seen him before, had been playing himself quite flawlessly, starts to under and overact horribly. He goes after Morales, who in 25 years has aged about 50 and is even having trouble to walk (!). A very forced dialogs ensues, and when Esposito leaves, Campanella turns the "Agatha Christie Mode: ON". Esposito begins to tie up loose ends with flashbacks of pictures and voices, so he turns around and well, the film finally flounders with the absurd and grotesque scene of the home prison.
Verdict
Technically the film is flawless. Photography is great and the director uses the camera smartly to set the tone. The plot is compelling and leaves one on the edge of the seat until halfway through, where the writer obviously ran out of ideas and decided to stuff things in for sheer convenience. The potential to exploit the convulsed Argentine political background of the 1970s is wasted. The moral overtone about justice and punishment is extremely risky and borderline appalling, I'm surprised no one has commented on this so far. The motivation of characters is seldom clear. The ending scene made me cringe for its cheesiness and implausibility.
All in all it is worth watching this movie, but it is far from the memorable masterpiece some people have represented. Thus I have focused mostly on the negative aspects of it, but there are various aspects on which it does deserve praise, especially coming from a country were the film-making industry is small and chronically underfunded.