Sleeper Cell: Intacto (2001)

Feb 122010

intacto Intacto (Intact in English) in short is a multi-lingual Spanish thriller directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, director of horror sequel 28 Weeks Later and the upcoming BioShock adaptation. It’s Spanish cinema, so for the plot, let’s keep it simple. There’s some opening business in a casino where we meet a luck-thief and our eventual nemesis through some fantastic, long hallway-shots and good old-fashioned Spanish lighting effects. So, seven years later and as basically as I can say, there’s this dude, Tomas, that survived a plane crash (Leonardo Sbaraglia, Diario de una Ninfomana) (similar to Bruce Willis in Unbreakable, but not for the same reasons), and he’s been found by this other dude (who we met in the opening scene), Federico, (Eusebio Poncela, Barbie Tambien Puede Estar Triste) that knows why he survived. He lived because he’s lucky. Makes sense, right? So there’s this whole underground scene of life or death gambling. Regular folks show up to get their pictures taken; they’re the pawns, referred to as “captives.” They trade their luck away in the form of a Polaroid photo to the lucky ones. …don’t worry, you read that right the first time.

Protagonist Haiku:
Tom survived the crash?
Bugs like him too? What can’t five
o‚Äôclock shadows do?

And really, it makes sense considering that cameras steal your soul one flash at a time. According to the Transactions of the Devonshire Association (Vol. 90, 1958), it is reported that in March of 1958 two Devonshire soccer teams refused to be photographed before their match for fear that bad luck would befall the game. Based on that logic, and the fact that he’s never really done serious jail time, you have to wonder if Mike Tyson (whose picture was taken with his opponent before EVERY boxing match (just like all boxing matches) is really the luckiest man alive. Was The Hangover really that funny? Or is Iron Mike really made of gold?

Supporting Character Haiku:
Federico‚Äôs hands
steal luck? Need to introduce
him to Michael Bay.

The lucky ones engage in strange luck games and the winner gets all the photos to have more luck-ness. So our hero gets signed up for games like which person’s molasses-covered head will attract the big bio-luminescent bug, or which person’s luck-huckleberry will do whatever before everyone else’s. Get it?

Here’s where I get pissed at an immensely popular British electro-rock group:
I don’t feel I’m operating in spoiler territory here considering the following scene was recounted in the radio interview that initially got me to seek this movie out; there is a luck game in the movie where all contestants are blind-folded and made to run full out through a forest. The winner is the one who doesn’t smash into a tree. So why does that make me angry with The Prodigy? In 2005 The Prodigy released a dvd with all their music videos illustrating their entire strobe-splattered career right up until their newest video for a “Voodoo People” remix – the video features a random assembly of young British ravers blindfolded and running down a busy street straight into a forest where the cute clubby chick is the last person left standing at the end of the video. Such a blatant theft of an awesome idea is pretty low. Even for a pill-popping egomaniac like Keith Flint. And it’s almost as bad as Beyonce acting like she wrote “If I Were a Boy.” Or the United States Air Force Reserve recording an instrumental “Fell in Love With the Girl,” airing it in their Super Bowl commercial and thinking it wouldn’t get back to Jack White.

Texas Toothpick

Top 5 Lucky Items List (sooner or later I’ll quit with this disclaimer, but trust me, all these are established “real” superstitions…):
5 – The Chicory Flower (which also makes you invisible!)
4 – A Calf’s Tongue (protects you from poverty)
3 – Texas Toothpick (raccoon penis bone, or baculum, made into earrings or several strung into a necklace help with fertility and gambling)
2 – Vulture Heads (in South Africa, it’s believed vultures can see into the future, and their heads are made into charms to help lottery players)
1 – Bees (who are the messengers of God and sing the 100th psalm on Christmas Eve. Find a friend with an apiary if you doubt.)

So our lucky one, Tomas, discovered in the plane-crash wreckage is strapped with giant wads of cash taped to his chest. In this world of luck-betting and fortune-stealing, there is a group of highly specialized individuals trained to investigate plane crashes and smuggling. These people are called “police.” And so is introduced the second hero: Detective Sara (Monica Lopez, Amanecer de un Sueno). After Lucky Tom escapes his armed guards in the hospital, Sara detects her way into the home of a lucky one and uses him to find El Fugitivo, Tomas.

Other Protagonist Haiku:
Detective Sara:
one name and even fewer
bras. Awesome country!

But of course, every system needs an end-game, just like every game needs a championship. The championship is held in Ucanca in the Canary Islands, where the champion lives. He’s called “The Jew,” and is a holocaust survivor,¬†and is the luckiest man in the world. The luckiest of the lucky get to compete in a modified version of Russian Roulette against The Jew- superstar Max von Sydow (The Exorcist, Conan the Barbarian, Never Say Never Again, The Ice Pirates, Dreamscape, Dune, Ghostbusters 2, A Kiss Before Dying, Awakenings, Needful Things, Judge Dredd, What Dreams May Come, Snow Falling on Cedars, Nuremberg, Minority Report, Heidi, Rush Hour 3, Shutter Island and the soon to be released Ridley Scott Robin Hood)

So, will our hero be lucky enough to even get to Ucanca? Will our detective be lucky enough to stop the senseless violence? Will I be lucky enough to get any of my readers to log onto Netflix to check out a movie that’s mostly in Spanish? Who can say?

You know, for every Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Life is Beautiful there are a dozen or more like Tom Tykwer’s Princess and the Warrior (Der Krieger und die Kaiserin) or Erik van Looy’s The Memory of a Killer (De zaak Alzheimer). These are movies that would’ve collected awards hand over fist if they were in English, but get overlooked, because the in-jokes are hard to really understand. And really, if it were a successful movie, wouldn’t Hollywood have remade it starring Nic Cage as the moody detective? Sure The Departed was a great movie and even deserved those couple of Oscars but seriously, take the time to check out the Infernal Affairs triolgy out of Hong Kong. They really are incredible and have some of the greatest camerawork you’ve ever seen. Ok, so I haven’t seen them either, but movie magazines told me so.

Even better about foreign movies? You honestly don’t know what’ll happen next! They’re so often made outside the traditional American system of story-telling, that’s it’s next to impossible to figure out which character fits which stereotype because we just don’t know their stereotypes. Not only that, but not every foreign character has a British accent. I love Gladiator and Amadeus, but Jesus Christ, I’m tired of every German or Frenchy speaking the Queen’s.

Top 5 Foreign movies to Netflix:

5 - Nochnoi Dozor (Night Watch, Russia)
4 - Un Long Dimanche de Fiancailles (A Very Long Engagement, France)
3 – Abre los Ojos (Open Your Eyes, Mexico)
2 – Wu Ji (The Promise, China)
1 – La Science des Reves (The Science of Sleep, France)

It can be easy to miss inside jokes in foreign movies; understandable – we don’t know the politics or customs or traditions or social punching bags of most countries. Who is Spain’s equivalent to Bill Clinton? I don’t know either. So, in the beginning of Intacto, when two characters speak to each other, mainly in English, but pepper the conversation with Spanish, what’s the significance? Is one more or less formal? Like how “au revoir” means something close to “until we see each other again,” “arrivederci” means “until we meet again,” but “adios” means “goodbye.” How is English perceived in Europe? I don’t know; I’ve never been there. It’s easy to find yourself out of the loop but you can’t let it intimidate you. That’s just what those greasey Euros want. So ask loud questions in the dark over open-mouthed popcorn chewing and flaunt your ignorance like a giant American flag flappin’ from the tailgate of your lifted 4×4.

goodluck

Sleeper Cell is a weekly column that will reflect movies that you perhaps missed or have always been meaning to watch but are too much of an asshole to place into your Netflix queue. ¬†This could be a movie from 50 years ago or a movie from last year. ¬†Bottom line, these are choice flicks and you missed out so Zack and our other writers are going to tell you what’s up.

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