KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

Leoni Haney Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Ignacio Falcone This movie has no emotions. No heart. The idea/the story is great, but the movie is not. Most of the Argentinian movies have this problem. The lack of music makes it even more boring and slow. This movie doesn't make you feel any feelings but boredom. i know the actor from other films and he is a great professional, but in this movie is totally wasted. Nobody can declare that he did a great performance. He didn't make any gesture, he didn't even talk. Nothing. The dialogs are simple, dull and poor. In my opinion our taste for movies depend on our own values, culture, upbringing, experiences, etc. Thats why some people love a movie, and some other people don't. But this...this is a bad movie.

alomino222 Another Argentinian film that copies everything done before regarding shots and framing. Is like they all come from a film school that shows to the pupils films from the sixties and then, all of them copy here and there a shot. Amazing!. The real Argentinian cinema is Sorin and Agresti, the rest just plays with the ignorance of local film critics and snob festivals. Do this director has something original to offer?? The film is a bore, pretentious in simplicity. The pathetic thing shows that the director just wanted to show how much can copy but have nothing to say, absolutely nothing more than try to jump the leap and become a Fassbinder or any master sadly forgotten. Wake up people, take a look to the old masters and stop being amaze about things that already exist long long time ago.

nolwd Well, here again we have a variety of reactions to a movie. I found this film brilliant. Of course it was slow but that was a main point. But boring?..For me, not at all. I acknowledge that others have found it boring, but I most certainly did not. For me, it was a deep insight into our society and the shallowness of some of those in it, and into a man's mind as he is so ignored by it. No-one around him recognizes the humanity under his exterior...and certainly would not expect, understand (or care) about what lead him to implode. It is a brilliantly executed film...in my opinion. The superb acting in the film of the main actor reminds me of the acting of the Secret Policeman in the recent German film, The Lives of Others. ...So much is conveyed by few words and movement..but what emotion there is! I highly recommend both films to readers here.

tsasa198 What bugs me more than anything about my job is how everybody I work with views their profession as two to three pay grades below them. They, unknowing or uncaring about the rest of the world who live with dirt floors and without hot showers, feel crushed under the weight of their own disappointment. Why they, special as they are, have to serve coffee is a grand mystery to them because clearly they deserve so much more. And it is that mentality there that drives "El Custodio," a film from Argentina about Ruben, a bodyguard to a politician and emotional ticking time bomb. He too feels entitled to more of life's riches and to have to play tail to a man who truly does live in the lap of luxury only serves to rub his nose in it. Ruben takes his job seriously and yet is a joke to all those around him. His passion for art is turned into a cheap party trick by his owner, and he has to play chauffeur to the politician's daughter while she services her boyfriend in plain view. In other words his job sucks.This all has a very authentic feel to it. Work is either hard or boring (that is, after all, why they pay you) and here we certainly suffer the latter. However, as it usually is, if you tell a boring story you end up with a boring movie, and that is exactly what we have here. His mundane professional experience is our mundane viewing experience. It is not like the guy is protecting his boss from assassination attempts at the UN, more like carting him around town so that he can spend some quality time with his goomah. Michael Mann has made a career out of showing men at work, but he has yet to capture the true feeling of his audiences work day. Most of us aren't driving a homicidal Tom Cruise around LA in the middle of the night. Here we get realism and that comes with it. There is some subtle humor mixed in, mostly dealing with sex. But the tricks director Rodrigo Moreno plays on us are so mild and inconsequential that they are instantly forgettable.As we learned many moons ago, when Hollywood does bodyguard movies they can't help but dose the whole thing in sap. We do tag along with Ruben as he takes his whole family out to dinner, and while they are supposed to be funny and/or eccentric they don't come off as any more crazy than your family or mine. Well except for the part where he brandishes a gun, but hey, maybe you're from down South. Romance arrives in the form of a prostitute but even that is handled with stone cold seriousness. Since this is not a Wolfgang Petersen/Clint Eastwood movie don't expect anything as over roasted as a slow mo shot Ruben taking a bullet for his master. Quite the opposite in fact. And even though the film does take a populist turn towards the end I can't forgive them for how much the first 2/3 of it felt like a chore. If you've ever worked in your life you'll feel for this guy, but you will also recognize that most of us swallow our pride every day when we wake up and go off to bake bread, drive cabs, or serve coffee. But apparently poor Ruben was incapable of that. **1/2