Elvira Mínguez in Running Out of Time (1994)

Clips

Review

This is the highly acclaimed Spanish movie "Dias contados", aka Running Out of Time.

Imanol Uribe copies Luc Besson's style so closely that you'd think it was a Besson movie if it were in French or English instead of Spanish. Like Besson's La Femme Nikita and The Professional, it is a brilliantly photographed character study of hard-core criminals and other lowlifes, which breathes life into the seedy and despicable characters. If you read about some of these characters in the newspaper, like Besson's hit man Leon, or Uribe's terrorist Antonio, neither of whom has a last name, you would think they must be soulless beasts, but these movies examine them as the complex humans they are.

Actually, if these films stopped at showing them realistically, I would be much happier. Unfortunately, they go past realism and actually romanticize them. That makes it difficult to remember that they are terrorists, hit men, and junkies, and that the terrorists will kill innocent bystanders and babies, and the junkies will all die young, ugly, and desperate. Oh, well, I guess it's just a story, and a good one at that, with an appropriate surprise ending.

Nudity Report: The nudity was both prolific and explicit.

DVD Info: A non-anamorphic, undersaturated DVD with hard-coded subtitles that can't be turned off.


Written by Scoopy…courtesy of Scoopy.net