Eye for an Eye

Luis Tosar turns in quite a solid performance here as his gentle and caring nurse "Mario" finds himself embroiled in the antics of the Galician mob. His problems start when "Antonio" (Xan Cejudo) is released from jail. He's an elderly man with months to live who used to head up his family drug dealing business with his two sons "Toño" (Ismael Martínez) and the slightly bonkers "Kiko" (Enric Auquer). The problems start to accumulate for "Mario" when the two sons get themselves into hot water with the Chinese and Colombian mob and so now owing an huge sum of money, they need to get some help from a bedridden dad who knows exactly how much of a liability the pair are. To that end, they attempt to recruit the services of the persuasive "Mario" and either willingly or by fear of threats to his pregnant wife "Julia" (María Vásquez), he is tasked with getting the old man to agree to bail them out. Now just to add a little more to this already fairly toxic mixture, it turns out that "Mario" used to have a younger brother and he fell foul of "Antonio" and died of an overdose - so even this carer has an axe to grind with his patient and his thuggish family. By this point, "Kiko" is in jail and is being regularly "reminded" by his fellow inmates of the debt. "Toño" is going to have to act fast if he is to get his errant little brother out of harm's way and that puts extra pressure on the now obviously conflicted "Mario" who must choose between his future happiness or his visceral need for revenge - all whilst "Antonio" lies in his bed doing some unexpected scheming of his own. Maybe it's because he is a nurse and so you expect a certain kindliness, but Tosar's version of "Mario" turns out to be anything but the amenable character in his scrubs that we might have expected and this gritty and hardened drama proves far more effective at immersing us in a world of criminality and cruelty than many films of the revenge thriller genre. Auquer also delivers, albeit sparingly, as the truly odious "Kiko" and though he has no dialogue to speak of, Cujedo also brings something quite menacing and calculating to the proceedings as a man who spends the entire film vulnerably and venomously on an intra-venous drip! The scoring is aggressive, the photography dark and tensely directed and the whole look of this drama allows us to overlook the disappointing banality of the writing at times. It's not an easy watch; there is enough jeopardy throughout to keep the plot interesting and the incomplete denouement seemed oddly fitting. Worth a look.