Wild Tales (15.)
Directed by Damián Szifrón.
Starring Ricardo Darin, Erica Rivas, Oscar Martinez, Maria Marull, Dario Grandinelli and Leonardo Sbaraglia. In Spanish with subtitles. 121 mins
Argentina's Wild Tales – a compendium of six darkly comic stories of contemporary mayhem and horror – arrives in British cinemas on a burst of global enthusiasm. There are rave reviews aplenty splattered across the posters; an Oscar nom for best foriegn film and it has Almodovar as a producer, his name on the poster offering a subliminal suggestion that you will enjoy this in the way you used to enjoy his early films. So I feel like I'm venturing into a lonely little corner by suggesting that this collection of contemporary crack ups is not all it is cracked up to be.
It storms into life with a mighty opening installment where passengers on a plane find that they have a strange and unexpected connection and then …. well I can say no more. (The problem with this kind of film is that mentioning anything that happens after say the first three minutes counts as a spoiler.) It's not entirely original but it is slick, concise and jauntily malevolent and you think that if they can toss this away before the opening credits, this is really going to be something.
Regrettably, like many a Bond film, it packs most of it punch into the pre-credit sequence. The five tales that follow – which take in road rage, wedding day infidelities, the frustrations of petty bureaucracy, people trying to buy their way out of justice - are beautifully made and consistently entertaining but not terribly wild. The denouements are often too easy to predict or the ironies are just a bit too pat.
.
Wild Tales (15.)
Directed by Damián Szifrón.
Starring Ricardo Darin, Erica Rivas, Oscar Martinez, Maria Marull, Dario Grandinelli and Leonardo Sbaraglia. In Spanish with subtitles. 121 mins
Argentina's Wild Tales – a compendium of six darkly comic stories of contemporary mayhem and horror – arrives in British cinemas on a burst of global enthusiasm. There are rave reviews aplenty splattered across the posters; an Oscar nom for best foriegn film and it has Almodovar as a producer, his name on the poster offering a subliminal suggestion that you will enjoy this in the way you used to enjoy his early films. So I feel like I'm venturing into a lonely little corner by suggesting that this collection of contemporary crack ups is not all it is cracked up to be.
It storms into life with a mighty opening installment where passengers on a plane find that they have a strange and unexpected connection and then …. well I can say no more. (The problem with this kind of film is that mentioning anything that happens after say the first three minutes counts as a spoiler.) It's not entirely original but it is slick, concise and jauntily malevolent and you think that if they can toss this away before the opening credits, this is really going to be something.
Regrettably, like many a Bond film, it packs most of it punch into the pre-credit sequence. The five tales that follow – which take in road rage, wedding day infidelities, the frustrations of petty bureaucracy, people trying to buy their way out of justice - are beautifully made and consistently entertaining but not terribly wild. The denouements are often too easy to predict or the ironies are just a bit too pat.
.
