Perigosa Obsessão

In Rio de Janeiro, the Argentinean truck driver Javier Labat (Pablo Echarri) gets in trouble while playing soccer with a group of Brazilian workers in the harbor. He fights against the guys and is helped by his compatriot Tony Corsini (Mariano Martínez); he escapes with his truck, but is chased by the guys; he has a serious accident in Rio-Niterói Bridge, falling down in Baía de Guanabara with his truck. Tony brings money and dry clothes to Javier, forges his passport and they travel to Buenos Aires. When Javier claims his handbag, he find 5 kg of cocaine inside it and together with X, they dump the drug in the toilet of the airport, where they meet the sexy Brazilian Mariana (Carol Castro). They kidnap her and are chase by two detectives. Javier meets his uncle, who tells him that the transport company of their family had partnership with drug dealers; when his father found a loading of drugs, he hide it and had an accident with his truck provoked by the criminals, where his younger brother died. Now the criminal organization is seeking the missing drugs. Javier is chased by the drug dealers and the corrupt detectives, and helped by Tony, Mariana and friends.

"Peligrosa Obsesión" is an ambitious and full of action Argentinean production, having well choreographed fights, car chases and other clichés of the genre. Unfortunately the screenplay is a complete mess, with a confused situation and characters. The story is difficult to be followed in spite of being an action movie, and the motives of the characters are never clear. I am not familiar with the lead cast, but the Brazilian Carol Castro is gorgeous and extremely sexy; however the director was afraid, maybe for moral reasons, to make a threesome among Mariana, Tony and Javier although her relationship with the men induces to such situation. Pablo Echarri has a weak performance and Mariano Martínez has better acting, but the lead trio shows a great chemistry and is charismatic. In the end, "Peligrosa Obsesión" is a different and Hollywoodian Argentinean movie and a reasonable entertainment. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Perigosa Obsessão" ("Dangerous Obsession")

The Argentine cinema, as a rule, likes to make intimate movies in which ideas are explored. Big action movies are not exactly what the country's films have become notorious for. Enter an ambitious new director, Raul Rodriguez Pena, who wanted to create an action movie that wanted to capitalize on that genre. "Peligrosa obsesion" is what came out.

There are aspects of this movie we have already seen to better results than what the director accomplished with this movie. Yes, there is a lot of action. Some of it, is just as good, if not better than other movies of the genre. What the creators of the movie forgot, was write a plausible plot because most of what comes out in the film doesn't make sense.

The film is not helped by Pablo Echarri's appearance in it. As Javier Labat, he is not convincing. Mariano Martinez, a better Argentine actor, who we have admired in "No sabe no contesta" and "El Faro", fares much better as Tony Corsini, whose presence at the beginning of the film makes no sense at all, but who is an integral character to all what happens to Javier. Carol Castro plays a Brazilian journalist who knew much more than what she let on.

While this is not a horrible film by any means, a stronger screen play and a stronger lead would have done wonders for it.

This film is exactly the type of film Latin America needs to bring its own mass audiences back to the movie theaters. The artsy films do well in film festivals, especially outside their own countries and Latin America itself. But the masses see the misery and suffering of these art films every day, and are not going to come back to national cinema until a good part of the films lose their artsy, long and boring reputation - a perception held even by the so called elite, and become the escapist entertainment most seek, without reading subtitles for 2 hours.

This film is a step in that direction. Definitely not a film to win awards, or critical praise, it is however a crowd pleaser. A glossy American style production (but with the countries' own stars and nuances), this thriller is a winner. Another exceptional quality is its "regional" appeal. Of the three main characters, two are Argentinian/Uruguayan, and one Brazilian. Some dialog in Portuguese is sprinkled in, and the action in the film takes place between Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires.

It's great seeing two neighboring potential world powers in many senses(Argentina and Brazil) working together and showing a bit of the best of what each has, instead of these countries' usual reliance on distant continents for their popular entertainment. Bravo!