Intacto (2002)

After a small break, we are continuing our exploration of Spanish cinema, this time with a thriller that we might label as supernatural, although it seems that it isn't. Is there such a thing as luck, and are some people luckier then others? I think that most of us asked these questions at some point in our lives, but for Intacto the thing is quite clear. There is such a thing called luck and some people are luckier than others, but only because they steal that luck by touching others. A quite interesting concept that led to this movie, and I am sure will lead to its remake sometime in the future. Directed and written by a talented Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and starring Max von Sydow and Mónica López, Intacto questions the basic human beliefs, although this depends on how you perceive the world around you.Tomás is the only survivor of a horrible plane crash, suffering only minor injuries. As it turns out, Tomás isn't just a lucky survivor, he's also a bank robber, wanted for an armed robbery. Before law enforcement got to question him, he is approached by a man claiming to be working for an insurance company. He offers him a way out of his current predicament and into something much larger, a game with huge stakes, explaining that he can actually can control his luck and use it to his benefit. Actually, there is a whole underworld of people who consider themselves lucky and gamble with it. The rewards are enormous, thrills unparalleled and eventually, consequences can be lethal. In this hierarchy, there is a king, and his name is Samuel, an undefeated ruler of luck, reigning for over thirty years. Love, fear, death and gambling, a perfect combination… The movie itself might seem a bit stretched, but this is only because we are used to fast paced thrillers that leave no time for thinking and further pontification of story. Although, I must admit that the story could be a bit more coherent, because it seems that the glue that binds the scenes was relatively scarce… As a final note, my opinion concerning luck and the whole concept of it in this movie: I don't believe that there is such a thing as luck, its all just a statistical coincidence. At this time we must make a distinction between different perspectives, lets say that we take 100.000 people and throw them from a plane without a parachute. Then we take people who survive this and make them run through a minefield. If we don't have a winner at first we repeat the experiment. The guy that survives all this to us as neutral observers is a statistical probability and reality, but from his perspective he is lucky. The thing that instantly classified this movie to fantasy is the fact that you can rob someone of their luck by touching them. But thats just me, feel free to form your own opinion and enjoy…Movie recommendations Rabbit-Reviews.com - Only movies worth watching

I think that this is meant to be a meditation on fate couched in a fantasy about luck. This movie asks you to follow a tale about some people who are preternaturally lucky and about one person in particular, Sam, who is the supreme being of the lucky. Sam is so lucky that he survives many games of roulette where he gives a challenger first crack at shooting him with a six-shooter having only one empty chamber. Even if Sam has survived ten of these challenges, his odds of survival are about ten million to one. So, you have to take the premise with a grain of salt and try to just go with it. The movie is structured like reporting on a sporting event where the players bet on their luck to survive events like crossing a busy highway blindfolded, or running blindfolded through a dense forest. Those who make in through these trials intact ultimately get to face Sam and his roulette game--kind of like getting to the World Series of the lucky people. In addition there are some mystical elements thrown in, like Sam's being able to suck the luck out of someone by touching them, as if luck were a commodity of exchange. Then there are some musings on how an apparently lucky event may turn out poorly in the long run. The story was too much of an abstraction to seriously engage me.On the upside director Fresnadillo has style. Many scenes have you on the edge of your seat, like the scene that has the blindfolded men racing through the dense forest with their being sequentially taken out by hitting a tree at a dead run. Or there is a car accident that is the most chilling and realistic I have scene. And it is impossible not to flinch when someone fires in a game of roulette, as those who watched "The Deer Hunter" will attest. The story is filmed in an intricate style that interleaves the lives of four protagonists, both in real time and in flashbacks. This style works for me when everything comes together in a revelatory climax. While everything did come together in the end, I found it to be more of an anti-climax than a grand climax. The actors do well enough, but this in not the kind of movie that depends much on strong dramatic performances. As Sam, Max von Sydow is pretty much wasted, except he is good at projecting a world-weary sadness.This is the only Fresnadillo film I have seen; I am hoping he can apply his talents to better stories.

i wish i did not watch it, so that i can re-watch it like the first time with the same feeling i got,so are you, if you have not watched it yet, its a great opportunity for you to see one of a great examples of how could anybody shot a beautiful film like that without making big or even small expenses.The film is about some very lucky guys saving their ass out of some big troubles, crashes, accidents and about their own competition between themselves to find who's the luckier one, and this luckier then goes to face off the luckiest one... The film is superb from the start till the end if you like the story as the most important matter in a film more than any other, no need to comment more, watch it.

While it's no chore to get the premise of this film at the start, certain people can take the "luck" of others, there's several points in the first half-hour that are muddled and may cause viewers to wonder who's who and what are they in the film for. If you are adept enough to get beyond that, all will become apparent and the film will be very satisfying. Of course the premise is so absurd that a great suspension of belief will be needed, but this is no more absurd than any really good fright flick, and most weird sci-fi. It is a quasi-fantasy thriller that sets itself up as a realistic drama with elements of the fantastic, but nothing terribly bizarre so that we then view it as completely realistic. Not an easy thing to do with a subject matter that could have become laughable. There are enough points of departure from the idea that luck is destiny so to give control to the participants of the games of luck. Now what about the possibility of getting the bad luck as well as the good? But that's a premise for a different film.