★★★½
“The long game.”
It’s surprising to me that there are currently no English-language external reviews listed for this on the IMDb. It’s certainly worthy of notice outside its native Spain, where it was nominated for thirteen Goyas, the local equivalent of the Oscars, winning Best Film and Best Actress. It takes place over a number of years around the turn of the millennium, when the Spanish state was in a notorious and bloody war against ETA, a terrorist group fighting for the independence of the Basque region. Mónica (Yuste) is a cop who is recruited by Angel (Tosar) to go deep undercover, and infiltrate ETA in order to provide information on the group, its members and their plans.
This takes a very long time, the group understandably being suspicious of outsiders and extremely cautious about in whom they put their faith. We dip into the life of “Arantxa”, the new identity of Mónica, as she becomes active in the separatist movement, laying the groundwork to be seen as reliable and, more importantly, trustworthy. It takes six years before she is finally allowed entrance and given a mission of note: providing shelter for Kepa (Gastesi), an ETA member on the run. Having gained his confidence, she is then brought in to a bigger plan, bringing leader Sergio (Anido) back into Spain, and restablishing an ETA cell in San Sebastian, to attack judges, police and other targets.
There isn’t anything particularly new here. You can probably tick off the story elements as they show up, if you’ve seen any other “undercover cop” thrillers along the same lines. It’s basically a series of narrow escapes in which Arantxa’s true identity is almost discovered. Sergio finds the phone she uses to talk to Angel, for example, or she is almost unable to return a folder after she passed it to the cops for copying. She starts to have feelings for Kepa too, while Angel faces resistance to the operation from the highers-up. Oh, and #Sexism, because it’s Spain. All fairly boilerplate stuff. However, the secret sauce is in the execution, which Echevarría does with no shortage of skill, particularly when it comes to dialling up the tension.
It is based on a true story, though to what extent it’s accurate, I can’t say. Here, not knowing the eventual outcome going in, except at the highest level (I was aware that ETA ended up disbanding) is likely a help. Because you won’t know whether or not Mónica completes her mission successfully – and, a different question, makes it out alive. I did appreciate there’s not much effort at moral grey here. Sometimes a terrorist is just a bad guy, and if you have any doubts about Sergio, his treatment of Monica’s cat will dissolve those [If they do not, we really can’t be friends!] Again, it’s not the subtlest of plotting. Yet between it and Echevarria’s skilled hand, it all undeniably gets the job done.
Dir: Arantxa Echevarría
Star: Carolina Yuste, Luis Tosar, Iñigo Gastesi, Diego Anido
a.k.a. La Infiltrada


As a child, Oo-yi came to Thailand with her mother as a migrant worker. They had the misfortune to work for the cruel Madam Bussara (Kingpayome), who had a particularly nasty habit of pimping out young girls to her lawyer, Methi. When she tried to do the same to Oo-yi, Mom stood up for her – and was beaten to death for her pains. Oo-yi was able to escape, and raised by Ni Wai (Sirikul). Now, an adult (Luevisadpaibul), she is set on vengeance, and intent on destroying Madam Bussara’s life. To do so, she becomes Thicha, “accidentally” bumps into Bussara’s son, Phatchai (Chirathivat), and begins cultivating a relationship with him. But that’s the story of revenge: it’s messy. Since her feelings for him start becoming genuine.
And, unfortunately, in this case, it’s not messy in a good or even interesting way. It’s messy in a “What the heck is going on?” way, with a large side-order of, “Can somebody please explain this to me?”, and a garnish of “Anyone? Hello?”. To say this film poses more questions than answers would be incorrect. Because that would wrongly imply it offers any answers at all. I’m just glad the version I saw ran a mere 84 minutes, because the IMDb cites a running time more than half an hour longer. Maybe the thirty-five minutes removed for this cut were all of the explanation. Though I suggest it’d be improved by removing about the same again.
I wonder if this film was made as some kind of bet. How many tropes and clichés can
I get the idea of what this is trying to do: really, be a female-centric version of The Hitcher. Though to some extent, that franchise went there itself, in The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting. Here, we have Bobbi Torres (Camacho) driving across New Mexico in her sweet muscle car, and when she stops for fuel, has an awkward encounter with Sheriff Bilstein (Schwab). Things get worse when she gets back on the road, and is quickly pulled over by the officer for speeding, which gets her a thousand dollar ticket she is unable to pay. Thanks to a prologue, we know Bilstein has a psychopathic fondness for tormenting and killing young women. This ain’t gonna end well.
At the beginning of this, I wondered if I was watching a Godzilla film. Because it opens with atomic bomb footage, depicting French test in the Pacific. We know what this leads to: gigantic lizards with fiery bre… Oh, hang on: it’s actually a group of women, looking for a place reputed to have particularly gnarly (if my knowledge of beach-speak doesn’t fail me, and it probably does) waves. There are three surfers, plus photographer Sarah (Galloy), who has been out of the game since an accident which wrecked her confidence. The island they find isn’t on any map, so it must be good, and not a death-trap waiting to happen to them. Right?
For a good while, this struggled to retain my interest, and when it did, the problems outweighed the positive aspects. Fortunately, after a solid hour of faffing around in ways that provoked mostly rolling of my eyes, the film found its stride. That’s funny, because it’s a running reference. Ok, not very funny. Down the stretch it both figuratively and literally pushes the pedal to the metal, in quite an impressive manner. My reaction was divided. Part of me wondered, where the heck this was earlier on? However, rather than petering out like a sad trombone, there’s no question it’s better for a film to finish strongly, and give the viewers something positive to take away with them.
Marni (Johnson) is stuck in the titular town, where oil fracking is causing problems from earthquakes to poisoning the local water supply. She’s barely scraping by as a single mom to teenage son Jason (Strange), working as a bartender for sleazy owner Daryl (McMahan), who has a bad case of wandering hands, and hustling customers at pool. Her life is upended when Steph (Carpenter) comes into the bar, kicks Marni’s ass on the pool table, and the two end up making out in the back alley. When Steph becomes aware of Darryl’s safe full of cash, she suggests they liberate it, to finance a new life for them and Jason, far away from Extraction.
I’ve seen worse films, to be quite clear. Technically, this is perfectly acceptable, with an apparently reasonable budget, put to decent use. But I don’t think I’ve seen one which has been more
Bec ‘Rowdy’ Rawlings is an Australian mixed martial-artist, who fought in the UFC for a bit, and then became the first woman to win a bare-knuckle boxing world title. This documentary covers her life, from growing up as a teenage tearaway, through motherhood transforming her character, her discovery of mixed martial-arts, a disastrous and highly toxic first marriage, and escaping that to become eventually the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship federation’s Women’s Featherweight World Champion. Phew. That’s quite a lot to get through in less than eighty minutes. The film does a decent job of covering its bases, through interviews with Bec, and her family and friends, plus no shortage of archive footage of Rawlings, both in and out of the ring.