Plata quemada

Plot synopsis:
The setting is Argentina, 1965. El Nene (Leonardo Sbaraglia), a petty thief, and Angel (Eduardo Noriega), a drifter, meet in the bathroom of a Buenos Aires subway station, and from that moment they are inseparable. They become known as "the twins", but their relationship is in fact that of lovers and, soon, as partners in crime. At a point when their relationship is already turning difficult, the plot sets in.
Their love and loyalty to each other is tested when "the twins" join a plan to hold up an armored truck together with a group of seasoned gangsters: their swaggering straight cohort Cuervo (Pablo Echarri), a sedative addict who's been carrying on an affair with the luscious Vivi (Dolores Fonzi); a 16-year-old nymphet; the trio's boss Fontana (Ricardo Bartis); and the elderly lawyer Nando (Carlos Roffé), who is past the days of any professional illusions and helps make connections to find a good team for the crime.
Angel is wounded by police gunfire during the robbery, provoking Nene to kill all of the guards and police in a fit of rage. Two police officers are among the victims, and so the police of Buenos Aires start a major search for the culprits. They soon find a lead to Vivi's apartment, where the gang had been hiding out, but by this time, all except Vivi have escaped to neighboring Uruguay. The police force Vivi to give away their plans, and the search is broadened to Uruguay.
Meanwhile, the gang needs to wait for new passports (to be arranged by a dubious character played by Héctor Alterio) for their escape from Uruguay.
They take refuge in an empty apartment in Montevideo, but the organisation of the documents takes longer than originally planned. The waiting is especially hard on Nene: Angel—who is described as constantly "hearing voices" and seems to suffer a slight form of schizophrenia—has been rejecting intimate contact with Nene since at least the beginning of the escape, for reasons indirectly connected with his condition.
Nene eventually decides to break curfew and "get some air", and he, Angel, and Cuervo go and enjoy themselves at a fair. That evening outside of the apartment is not their last though, partly because Angel continues to reject any contact and does not even speak to Nene anymore.
On one evening, Nene ends up verbally and sexually abusing another gay person, but finally he meets the prostitute Giselle (Leticia Brédice) and starts a relationship with her, even mentioning a solo escape with her.
When Nando is caught by the police, the group is forced to abandon their refuge. Fontana goes off on his own, but Nene brings Angel and Cuervo to hide out in Giselle's apartment before they leave the city at night.
Angel had sensed that Nene had been cheating on him, and he soon understands where Giselle fits in. Before it can come to a fight, however, he also hears from Giselle that Nene still cares for him and suffered from his rejection. Giselle tells Nene that she has a cousin who lives near the border and she can arrange passage, but not for three men the police are after. She says that a couple, a man and a woman, will be able to get across easily. When she forces him to choose between her and Angel, he chooses Angel.
Nene tells Giselle that he will find her and kill her if she turns them in. Despite his threats, Giselle goes straight to the police to turn in the gang. Before the group takes to their heels, police have already surrounded the building. At first, the trio believes they will be able to escape, thinking that the police will not endanger the haul (several million dollars) or the lives of a large number of policemen. In high spirits, the three of them set to defend the apartment and their freedom, while Nene and Angel rekindle their relationship and spend some short and erotic moments of mutual happiness. After the first wave of attacks, a contented Angel even says the "voices" he always heard have fallen silent.
The group soon finds out, however, that there is no way out. Cuervo dies in an attempt to sally, and Nene and Angel remain waiting for the next wave of police attacks on the apartment. Seeing that they can save neither their own lives nor the money, they burn the entire haul in a final outburst of joie de vivre.
Finally, Nene catches a bullet and dies in Angel's arms. Angel still holds Nene and sends a volley of bullets in the direction of the approaching police every now and again, when the lights fade out and the audience is left with the sound of the final fusillade of the police machine guns. It is implied that Angel committed suicide by cop.

Tags: violence, neo noir, murder, storytelling, romantic

Review:
Everything, the visuals, the literate script, with its sensitive, sensuous, heartbreaking dialogue, the suspense that does not leave you for a single minute, the violent finale that you expect and still keep hoping it will not happen, the exquisite acting of all the major players, it will all stay with me, forever, I am sure.
This is film-making of the best kind: contemporary, mature, it relates to reality but transcends it and reaches a perfectly beautiful, artistic, poetic level.
Often when (male) actors are asked to "play gay" you get an overly sexualized relationship - as though they feel the only way to portray the connection between men is through overt lust.The director and actors here, have instead sought out a more subtle, but infinitely more honest portrayal.
In a film such as this, when so much of the plot depends on the characters and their relationships, it becomes agonizing not to know exactly what they're saying..
They find it in Montevideo, they need false passports  to leave so they wait day after day until the police come and everything goes apocalyptic.The bare facts.But the real movie is about the two killers in the gang, El Nene and Angel, called Los Mellizos (the twins).
It's the story of a doomed relationship, confined into four rooms where intense passion and violence push the extremes.In their hostile world of drugs, cheap sex, prejudice and revenge they have to deal with a feeling born from repression and the fear of naming it.
There is, above all, their desperate search for love and loyalty that makes them some kind of tragic heroes in the end.Seldom has cinema faced the subject of masculine desire and affection in such a natural, honest and even tender way.
BURNT MONEY (Plata Quemada)Aspect ratio: 1.85:1Sound format: Dolby DigitalArgentina, 1965: Following a violent robbery on an armored car, two gay lovers - rebellious rich kid Nene (Leonardo Sbaraglia) and borderline schizophrenic Ángel (Eduardo Noriega) - are forced to flee with their accomplices to Uruguay, where they take refuge in a decaying apartment building.
Denied sexual favors by Ángel due to his worsening mental condition, Nene takes up with a sympathetic prostitute (Leticia Brédice), leading to jealousy, betrayal and tragedy...Based on true events recounted in a non-fiction novel by Argentinian writer/critic Ricardo Piglia, and directed by former producer Marcelo Piñeyro (THE OFFICIAL STORY), BURNT MONEY is a masterpiece.
The sacred and profane are interlinked in various ways (one extraordinary sequence cross-cuts between an act of worship in a Uruguayan church and an unpleasant encounter between Nene and a frightened youth in a public toilet), and the sweaty atmosphere is broken only by an explosive climax where the main protagonists are forced to take responsibility for their actions.
Former TV actor Pablo Echarri ("Chiquititas", "El Signo", etc.) plays a younger, headstrong member of the outlaw gang, blinded by youthful arrogance to the danger in which they have all become enmeshed, while Brédice (NINE QUEENS) plays one of the few significant female characters in this otherwise all-male scenario, a brittle creature who falls in love with the wrong guy, with appalling consequences for everyone around her.More than anything else, however, BURNT MONEY is a love story, played to perfection by two of the finest young actors of their generation.
Casting these two beautiful, experienced young men as lovers in a violent true-crime drama could not have been more fortuitous: Their devotions are rarely consummated on-screen (all of the aforementioned sex scenes are heterosexual), except for a chaste kiss at the end of the film, and an earlier, erotically-charged sequence in which Nene tends to a wound on Ángel's shoulder and initiates a sexual advance, only to be rebuffed because of Ángel's mental condition.
Look out for the devastating sequence in which Nene 'confesses' to Brédice about his relationship with Ángel, where he describes their mutual affection with heartbreaking emotional candor.To his credit, Piñeyro refuses to soft-pedal the dissolute nature of his central characters.
They may be thieves and murderers, but when Nene looks into Ángel's eyes, you know instinctively that their love transcends life and death, and is destined to last an eternity.
Not just a great gay film, BURNT MONEY is also a terrific love story, a heartstopping thriller, and an outstanding example of popular Spanish entertainment.(Spanish dialogue).
The two men at the center of the story are gay lovers who happened to be criminals.
At this point, we are of two minds, is Nene really cheating on Angel, or is he trying to use Giselle into providing another place where they can hide?
The violent end comes in a finale that doesn't have anything to envy to any other movies of the genre.The best thing in the film are the two leads.
Eduardo Noriega, is also a Spanish actor that has done excellent work before and he shows his range in a magnificent performance as Angel.
Leticia Bredice is Giselle, the young woman in Montevideo who befriends, then fall in love with Nene.The film proves Marcelo Pineyro is a voice to be reckoned with and who has an enormous talent for giving his audience his best..
The relationship between Angel and Nene is one of the most passionate, destructive, uncompromising depictions of love in all its blood-soaked sordidness that I've seen in a long time.
So complex a relationship needs time to develop on film and director ,Marcelo Piñeyro, isn't afraid to give it to them.
It is one of the most intensely erotic and romantic film I've seen in a very long time.This is a movie that will stay with me..
An excellent movie where everything is beautiful - from the crumbling, claustrophobic backdrops of the antagonists' hiding places, the actors and the background music.Besides showing an unusual homosexual relationship, the film also questions the relationship between sex, love and violence - even when the main characters turn "straight" violence and death hang in the air, with scenes sex often interspliced with those of death and agony.More importantly, you can't help but feel sorry - and yet almost envious - for the doomed (and did I mention beautiful?) lovers as they slide towards their inevitable end, just for the incredible passion they have for each other..
Burnt Money, a provocative, severe crime thriller from Argentina, begins like a Spanish- language Guy Ritchie narrative, with an assembly of criminals arranging a heist.
So much of this film seems already acquainted, from its appealing crime thriller stylization to its narrative echoes of Reservoir Dogs, Heat and Bonnie and Clyde, that when it takes one of its unprecedented turns it overcomes you.
There are a lot of unforeseen detours.The opening introduces us to Angel and Nene, gay lovers who live in a murky Buenos Aires apartment.
A narrator notifies us that they are known as "the twins." After showing how they met, in a grungy public restroom, the narrator distinguishes the one telling way they are similar: "the still eyes, the lost glare." The knifelike center on character relationships, and the novelistic way the story is divulged through sequential narrators, featuring internal monologue, prepares us to pull back to enmesh the "twins" in the heist.
Nevertheless, even in its brutal execution which extrinsically offers not much in the way of variation on a device dating back to the original 1932 Scarface, it maintains a theme of dissolution, a dream state made real to them, of feelings taking over, a theme which, in the end, makes the film its own beast..
I loved the whole experience; the feel, the mood, the music, the story, and the beautiful protagonists.I felt for the characters; their passion, problems, and failings.Besides, I like a true story told very well, with beautiful actors.
Burnt Money is an exceptional film in the crime drama genre and stands quite well as director Marcelo Pineyero provides Hollywood with an example of what subtlety can bring to cinema.
A few scenes strike out at me for recounting the director's work and it also must be said that the work of the actors that portrayed Nene, Angel and Cuervo was thoughtful and delivered with subtlety to match that of the director's nuanced vision of the world that the trio inhabits.Two scenes that immediately jump to mind are those that weave both dramatic long takes with clever use of diagetic sound to create a suspenseful dramatic scene.
Saw this movie several months ago and loved it , not only for the unusual way of portraying a gay relationship but for the fine acting , direction and the great sound track.
The plot is quite appealing (based on a true story, which helps building the film "credibility"), the director excels on creating a tense mood along the film and the actors masterfully build the carachters psichological profiles.
Well-acted, stylish Spanish crime-drama from Ricardo Piglia's book is allegedly based on factual account from 1965 involving estranged gay lovers in Argentina who re-energize their relationship with successful, brutal crime sprees (they call themselves "The Twins"); after one particular robbery ends in gunfire and dead cops, the two go into hiding along with their accomplices in Uruguay.
At first, the sexual clinches (which are actually non-sexual, as one partner keeps pushing the other away) are aloof and perhaps a bit self-conscious, but the actors improve along with the film; by the finale, Nene and Ángel really do seem like doomed soul mates, helplessly intertwined.
I like the relation ship between de main characters, is a way to show lovebetween two people, in this case, men Is a hard love story, but very human, very sensitive You can feel pain.
I didn't like the voice over at the beginning, we don't need itThe soundtrack is very smart, I loved the moment when The "nene" speaks thevoice over and we can hear Billy Holiday.
This film is based on a true story and its well acted but I did feel that this film could have been edited a little more tightly as it seems to drag at certain spots.
The overall look and mood of the film is impressive as it reminded me a little of "Traffic" and "Reservoir Dogs" with some good dialogue written in the script.
Its like "We'll put in a big gunfight at the end to make it more exciting" when the film really is more about two gay robbers and one is suffering a mental breakdown.
The way of act of Leonardo Sbaraglia and Eduardo Noriega is so close to life, so close to our way feeling deep inside.
Both films feature comparable nonstop action (in crime and in love), two young super stars (big names in their respective cultures), basically the same plot (change the location to Argentina & Uruguay in the 1910s here), and roughly similar shock values, relative to its time of release.
Starring Spanish actor Eduardo Noriega (Amenabar's "Abre Los Ojos) as a perturbed bank robber and Argentina's Leonardo Sbaraglia as his lover/accomplice, this action-packed period piece set in 1965 combines high production values and an intensely passionate love story.
The acting is first rate, as is the recreation of mid-1960s Argentina and Uruguay, but what make this movie worth watching is the chemistry between the two leads.
It's hard to write about this film, which is evidently based upon actual events, because the story and the characters are confusing.
If you want to see a gay love story (and sure, good acting) you might enjoy this movie.
Outcasts and somewhat desperate, two twenty-something gay lovers, El Nene (Leonardo Sbaraglia) and Angel (Eduardo Noriega), known as "the twins" -- because they are always together -- set out on a life of crime, recruited by corrupt politicians and businessmen who want to rob a bank truck loaded with loot.
The plot starts out in Argentina but shifts to Uruguay as the gang tries to evade capture.The film's tone is dark and moody, which matches the two lead characters.
The film's finale is quite intense, as a showdown with the police looms.Set in 1965 and based on a true story, the film begins with a wonderfully 1960s stylized score.
The two lead actors are fairly good in their performances, except that they convey the impression that they are straight, and as such, don't much care for their gay roles.The biggest problem with the film, though, is the script, which takes a topic that could have been mesmerizing and turns it into a rather dull and dreary saga that seems stretched, or padded, with unessential plot points.
A re-write could have helped.Largely a character study of two gay lovers on the run from the law, "Burnt Money" is not a bad film.
These are hours I will never get back.I would bet that gay men would find this movie very interesting but if you are not a gay man, I'd recommend you spend your time watching something else.
Also, for me, the men they were portraying (as it is based on a true story) were too stupid to be sympathetic.Not a bad film, just not very interesting..
Sometimes everything goes wrong with a movie and that it is the case for this one, bad casting, bad script with a potentially good story.
If you want my advice, OK, watch any Brazilian movies, you won't be disappointed, about argentina, I don't know yet, I can only tell you, stay away from "Burnt money", unless you are into gay films of course..
This film tells a story, based on true events from 1965, about three men who steal seven million dollars and then flee to Uruguay together with a fourth man who runs the show from a distance.
Whilst being interesting, the story many times might make one uncomfortable as it deals with various issues, such as homosexuality and sex, which are seen through a raw lens which is not commonly used in most movies.
Burnt Money is a love story, alone in its conquest for equality in the Latin American setting of 1965.
At the center are two men, Angel and Nene, characters sharing an extraordinary bond of love, implicit in two ways: one, in that their sexual identity is repressed, and two, that the viewer never witnesses sex in its explicit form between the two.
In a nod to Hollywood cinema, Marcelo Piñeyro focuses on the action just as much as he focuses on the relationship of two men, who call themselves Los Mellizos, or the twins.
Scene after scene, the incredible excruciation of being in love is honorably, even horrifically evident, such as in the scene where Nene tenderly takes to the bullet in his lover, Angel's side; whose agonized screams are shrill as well as painful.
By the end of the movie, the audience realizes for itself how living in a materialistic culture affects their understanding of the film.
This movie is not for the viewer with a preconceived or pessimistic notion of homosexuality, or one who is easily turned away from overt sexuality, as it appears elsewhere in the film.
It's inconceivable to think of a love surviving amidst chaos, yet explicitly evident by the film's conclusion are two characters gleefully and explicitly demonstrating their devotion; a scene where the two burn the money that they stole, and that which their pursuers are after..
We know from the start where this thing is going, so one may fairly discard any pretension of suspense and concentrate instead on character portrayal and other broad strokes of the cinematic artist's brush.This is, in short, a brilliant film whether or not it "goes" anywhere or stumbles on the way.
Whether the film lives up to its claim of being fundamentally a true story is really beside the point.
Inspired by a true story, this movie took place in Argentina and Uruguay in 1965 when a couple of gay lovers involved in a money robbery and then hunted down by swarms of cops.
That depends on you but honestly, this movie is one of the best of its category with amazing acting by both main actors (Leonardo Sbaraglia as Nene and Eduardo Noriega as Angel) plus extraordinarily good cinematography.
Many people may say that this movie is full of violence, sex and nudity but they all must agree that the love story it contains is so much beautiful that touch everyone's hearts.
Angel and Nene loved !.
This is really a good film and the two main guys have done a jam-up job of acting.
Leonardo Sbaraglia, (Nene) , Wild Tango, Wild Horses, and Eduardo Noreiga (ll) ( Angel) , The Devil's Backbone, Abre los ojos, Thesis.
She tells Angel that she and Nene are going away together.
The Twins (Angel and Nene) and Cuervo rob an armored car but all goes to hell when they kill two policemen.
Nene's love for Angel is true and sincere.
A gay relationship isn't enough for a movie to be good.
That is true, but that alone doesn't make a movie good.I wasn't hoping for action (which in fact is there), but for good characters, for a good, well paced story, something to think about or at least mess with something inside me - good cinema.
And the movie is mostly just plain boring, as if the director was trying to stretch it for no reason with scenes that added not much to the plot and/or character development (and I'm not talking about "meaningful silences" either).
Many reviewers mentioned the "passionate love" between them and I just don't think the movie has shown us the reasons.
Of course, it is a true story and that was how it happened so that is not the movie's problem.
It is execrably unpardonable that when a film casts two Latin Adonis like Leonardo Sbaraglia and Eduardo Noreiga to play lovers and completely passes over their carnal engagement, what makes it more retrograde is that the only explicit sex scenes are heterosexual.
OK, it is a film made in the turn of 21st century and depicting a true story taking place in the mid-60s in Buenos Aires, maybe retrograde it what it should be in retrospect.