Quien a Hierro Mata
What works best for me is that the film does not try to begin as a fast thriller, but as something murkier and more restrained. It enters slowly, through that nursing home, those corridors, those fragile bodies, that almost everyday atmosphere where violence seems to remain off-screen. And precisely because of that, it gradually gains poison. This is not a story of shootings and chases from the first minute, but a film about an apparently calm, polite, almost invisible person carrying an enormous wound inside. That initial calm matters, because it gives Mario’s development more weight.
Luis Tosar carries almost everything. And he does it with a very difficult sobriety, without needing to turn the character into a spectacular avenger or an obvious monster. The interesting part lies in how he manages silence, looks, small professional gestures, that way of seeming correct while something increasingly dark opens underneath. Mario is a nurse; he cares, listens, helps, touches vulnerable bodies. But the film gradually contaminates that idea of care until every gesture can have a double meaning. That is its best discovery: turning a place of protection into something morally unsettling.
Paco Plaza seems very assured in the staging. You can feel that he wants to move away from the more recognizable horror of his filmography, but without abandoning that sense of threat entirely. The camera stays close to the characters, the interiors weigh heavily, close-ups matter a lot and the cinematography creates a damp, closed, almost fermented atmosphere. Galicia does not appear as a postcard, but as a territory of moral fog: drug trafficking, family, guilt, money, silence and wounds passed from one generation to another. The film has something of a rural tragedy and something of a revenge thriller, but it is at its best when it does not fully surrender to either mold.
The contrast between the two worlds also works very well. On one side there is the nursing home, with its routine, fragility and false sense of safety. On the other, the criminal and family world, dirty, full of debts, threats and inherited codes. The film keeps crossing those spaces until you understand that violence does not belong only to traffickers or visible criminals. It can also settle inside someone who seems normal, someone who has learned to wait, someone who does not need to shout in order to do harm. That idea seems more disturbing to me than many scenes of explicit violence.
Mario’s development is what interests me most. Not because the film justifies him, but because it lets him move forward in an uncomfortable way. You understand that there is pain, loss and a need for impossible repair, but at the same time you see how that wound becomes another form of poison. Revenge here does not free, cleanse or return anything. It only degrades. And Tosar makes that process believable without having to explain everything. There are moments when his face is enough to feel that the character has already gone farther than he himself may want to admit.
Even so, I understand some of the harsher criticism. There are script decisions that can feel too calculated, coincidences that push the plot and certain flashbacks or underlinings that it does not always need. At times the film seems to trust its own visual and emotional force less than it should. There are also thriller elements that come close to the conventional, as if it needed to meet certain genre expectations when the most interesting part lay in the silent tension. Not everything is equally fine. There are very powerful moments and others that feel somewhat forced.
But as a whole, I find it very solid. It has rhythm, atmosphere, a well-worked darkness and a magnificent Tosar carrying the weight of a character who could easily have fallen into excess. I like that it does not turn revenge into comfortable spectacle, but into a kind of moral infection. You begin by looking at Mario as someone damaged and end up looking at him with growing unease, because the film forces you to ask how much pain is needed for a person to begin resembling what he hates. And that question, more than the criminal plot, is what remains. A dark, rough, very well-acted thriller with an ending that does not try to leave you calm.
Luis Tosar carries almost everything. And he does it with a very difficult sobriety, without needing to turn the character into a spectacular avenger or an obvious monster. The interesting part lies in how he manages silence, looks, small professional gestures, that way of seeming correct while something increasingly dark opens underneath. Mario is a nurse; he cares, listens, helps, touches vulnerable bodies. But the film gradually contaminates that idea of care until every gesture can have a double meaning. That is its best discovery: turning a place of protection into something morally unsettling.
Paco Plaza seems very assured in the staging. You can feel that he wants to move away from the more recognizable horror of his filmography, but without abandoning that sense of threat entirely. The camera stays close to the characters, the interiors weigh heavily, close-ups matter a lot and the cinematography creates a damp, closed, almost fermented atmosphere. Galicia does not appear as a postcard, but as a territory of moral fog: drug trafficking, family, guilt, money, silence and wounds passed from one generation to another. The film has something of a rural tragedy and something of a revenge thriller, but it is at its best when it does not fully surrender to either mold.
The contrast between the two worlds also works very well. On one side there is the nursing home, with its routine, fragility and false sense of safety. On the other, the criminal and family world, dirty, full of debts, threats and inherited codes. The film keeps crossing those spaces until you understand that violence does not belong only to traffickers or visible criminals. It can also settle inside someone who seems normal, someone who has learned to wait, someone who does not need to shout in order to do harm. That idea seems more disturbing to me than many scenes of explicit violence.
Mario’s development is what interests me most. Not because the film justifies him, but because it lets him move forward in an uncomfortable way. You understand that there is pain, loss and a need for impossible repair, but at the same time you see how that wound becomes another form of poison. Revenge here does not free, cleanse or return anything. It only degrades. And Tosar makes that process believable without having to explain everything. There are moments when his face is enough to feel that the character has already gone farther than he himself may want to admit.
Even so, I understand some of the harsher criticism. There are script decisions that can feel too calculated, coincidences that push the plot and certain flashbacks or underlinings that it does not always need. At times the film seems to trust its own visual and emotional force less than it should. There are also thriller elements that come close to the conventional, as if it needed to meet certain genre expectations when the most interesting part lay in the silent tension. Not everything is equally fine. There are very powerful moments and others that feel somewhat forced.
But as a whole, I find it very solid. It has rhythm, atmosphere, a well-worked darkness and a magnificent Tosar carrying the weight of a character who could easily have fallen into excess. I like that it does not turn revenge into comfortable spectacle, but into a kind of moral infection. You begin by looking at Mario as someone damaged and end up looking at him with growing unease, because the film forces you to ask how much pain is needed for a person to begin resembling what he hates. And that question, more than the criminal plot, is what remains. A dark, rough, very well-acted thriller with an ending that does not try to leave you calm.
Mini Review: What works best for me is that the film does not try to begin as a fast thriller, but as something murkier and more restrained. It enters slowly, through that nursing home, those corridors, those fragile bodies, that almost everyday atmosphere where violence seems to remain off-screen. And precisely because of that, it gradually gains poison. This is not a story of shootings and chases from the first minute, but a film about an apparently calm,...
