El Niño - Jagd vor Gibraltar

I went into this film having seen some of the directors other work. I loved "Celda 211" and the crazy adventure-fantasy "El Corazon del Guerrero" (absolute must see). So I had pretty high hopes.

I was however slightly disappointed. A pretty bland and in my opinion uninspired film. Yes, it had some great action sequences, even though I wouldn't go as far as to call this an action movie, and some great locations and visuals. But it was a pretty routine rise and fall story of a trio of young friends wanting to make it in the big boys business. For me it was lacking the tension this type of 'cops and criminals' film needs. An edge and rawness that "Celda 211" most definitely did have.

The best parts for me were amongst the policemen and -women. They were also the best played out and parts acted. Louis Tosar is always great and I hope we will (and already are) be seeing more of him in international productions. It was the young ones that didn't quite nail it. A trio of pretty simply written characters (even reminding me of early John Woo characters, like in "A Better Tomorrow"). The Halil character was just to young and innocent looking for the part, the overzealous Compi was the cliché dumb guy and sometimes pretty annoying and the steelblue eyed Nino didn't really have that many expressions and came over pretty wooden. Even when he meets and eventually courts the beautiful Amina, his demeanor doesn't change at all. All this plus an underused (permanently hidden behind sunglasses) Ian McShane made a potentially great story a disappointing view.

Comparable in subject matter but way more exhilarating are "The Business" and the recent "Gibraltar".