By Pablo Suarez
Argentine filmmaker Bruno Hernández’debut feature 8 tiros is a crime thriller with a noir edge that looks good but never rings quite true. Despite formal achievements in cinematography, sound and art direction, the story of two brothers trying to seal a dark past is filled with clichéd dialogue, wooden performances, underdeveloped characters, and unconvincing action scenes and shoot-outs.
Upon his mother’s death, Juan (Daniel Aráoz) comes back to town to settle long delayed scores with his older brother Vicente (Luis Ziembrowski), a high-ranking local mobster involved in drugs and prostitution. As youngsters, Juan worked for Vicente for a long time, but afterwards he wanted out of the crime world. Vicente felt Juan’s exit like an act of treason so he sent his men to kill him. Which didn’t go as planned, and yet Juan was left for dead. That happened seven years before and now Juan has returned for his payback.
There’s good atmosphere in 8 tiros and the film is mostly consistent, from beginning to end. Highly-contrasted photography with drained-out tones — or very saturated ones, according to the dramatic nature of the scene — is accompanied by a cohesive art direction that firmly establishes the traits of the environment; and when not overused, sound also adds extra layers to the overall ambiance. To a certain degree, 8 tiros looks good.
But as far as the rest goes, it’s all too generic and not even well-executed. When the characters are this underdeveloped, only great performances can make a small difference. Which is not the case here. The actors sound as though they were reciting their lines, not even believing in the characters they play. Clichés flow in a seemingly endless stream, ushering in feeble action scenes and risible shoot-outs, half-cooked stereotypes and no sense of true suspense at all.
So much for yet another local attempt to tackle a genre that may appear to be not that difficult to pull off. When the truth is, this shouldn’t be so hard.
Production notes:
8 tiros (Argentina, 2015). Directed by Bruno Hernández. Written by Andrés Gelos, Luis Langlemey, Javier De Nevares. With Daniel Aráoz, Luis Ziembrowski, Leticia Brédice, Alberto Ajaka, Roly Serrano, Alejandro Fiore. Cinematography: Julián Apezteguía. Art direction: Graciela Fraguglia. Running time: 87 minutes
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