CARANCHO (2010) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Pablo Trapero
Ricardo Darín, Martina Gusman, Carlos Weber
Noir from Argentina about a disbarred lawyer, literally an ambulance chaser, who preys on the victims of car wrecks. When he gets involved with an emergency-room doctor who's self-medicating with the stuff she's supposed to be giving her patients, it's a connection of two doomed souls and a ticket to hell for both of them. Not that their lives aren't hellish enough to begin with. The corruption that runs the world they do their jobs in is pervasive and inescapable. Even the hospital looks squalid and gloomy, the last place on earth you'd want to end up if you needed medical care. The movie runs out of surprises eventually and goes on a little too long, but Darín and Gusman are both very good, and Trapero shoots a lot of it on the fly, as if a bunch of stuff was going on and he just happened to be there to catch it with a camera. I sure hope life everywhere in Argentina isn't like this.
