Thursday 3 November 2011

COLD SWEAT

CONTIENE LOS DATOS DE LA HISTORIA

This would appear to be only the fourth Argentinian film I've ever seen, after the impressive thriller The Secret In Their Eyes, Apartment Zero (which is co-British and pretty dull) and something called Blood Of The Virgins which I have to confess I can't actually remember very much about beyond it being a bit rubbish. This horror-thriller-suspense number also isn't very good, although it has a wonky premise and some interesting ideas, but doesn't really work as there's really not enough reason given for the villains to do what they do.

Sometime in the 1970s twenty five crates of dynamite went missing and wound up in the hands of some political extremists; now, more than thirty years on, the two remaining nutters are imprisoning and torturing people in their ordinary Buenos Aires house: setting them incomprehensible maths questions and prowling the house in flameproof suits. One young man goes in looking for his girlfriend whose last text appears to have come from inside....

Sadly, there doesn't appear to be much reason for these two old goats to behave like Jigsaw from the Saw movies. What are they attempting to gain from all this? It really would have helped to have some - indeed, any - explanation, no matter how dodgy. I did wonder if I'd nodded off at some point and therefore missed the crucial bit of exposition, but judging by a few online reviews it looks as if I didn't miss anything because the rationale simply isn't there. Cold Sweat (Sudor Frio) is really little more than an remarkable second-tier torture movie: it doesn't go for the outrageous bloody sadism of the Saws and Hostels but with its pretty horrible idea of soaking people in nitroglycerin, it certainly ranks above the Banes and Caged and Hungers of this world. But "it's silly but kind of okayish" is really the best that can be said about it.

**

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