THE STORY – Responding to an emergency call, a young paramedic unwittingly finds himself thrust into the middle of a war between two crime lords, triggering an escalating series of gruesome twists and turns over the course of one crazy night.
THE CAST – Chino Darin, Ester Expósito, Vincente Romero, Kike Arce, Asier Etxandia & Noah Ruiz
THE TEAM – Hugo Ruíz (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 94 Minutes
Three years ago, Spanish director Hugo Ruíz came out swingin’ with “One Night with Adela,” a single-take revenge thriller that took Tribeca’s Midnight section by storm and won him the Best New Narrative Director award at the festival, a rare feat for a midnighter to achieve. The film was even nominated for a Goya Award, the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars, for Best Cinematography. However, “Adela” never quite broke through as a seminal work in the long-take canon, like “Birdman” or “1917” or even other international stunners like Sebastian Schipper’s “Victoria.” For all of its style, there was a lack of substance, a sluggish quality to the film’s seething rage that held it back from making much noise with genre fans. Thankfully, “Adela” was developed as the first in a trilogy of all-night crime sagas, giving Ruíz two more chances to try and establish his name as a genre-led filmmaker. If the second installment, “Dante,” is any indication, Ruíz still has some more work to do. The writer/director’s ruthless return to Tribeca’s midnight slate (now deemed “Escape From Tribeca”) is an engaging watch, sure to satisfy viewers looking for enough blood-soaked violence to whet their appetites. However, the complex ideas it wants to wrestle with feel too vague and simplistic, leaving you with little to linger on.
The film begins with Mario (Enrique Arce), a Spanish mobster, driving frantically down the streets of Madrid. He has come into possession of a beautiful treasure, only visually portrayed by a brilliant golden glow in the holder’s palms – the first of what are many direct visual callbacks to the cinema of Quentin Tarantino – and it’s worth enough to make any fellow mobster envious. He plans to take it to his brother, Chemi (Asier Etxeandia), the leader of a major crime syndicate. However, he crashes his car and suffers intense injuries, including a gnarly stab in the throat from a car mirror, forcing him to call for an ambulance. In comes young, anxious paramedic Eduardo (Chino Darín), thinking he’s coming to tend to a simple wound, only to find a dying mob boss bleeding out fast. Eduardo insists on going to a hospital, but Mario refuses. As Eduardo begins treatment, they are interrupted by an angry Santo (Vicente Romero), Mario’s business partner, and Maki (Ester Expósito), Santo’s cousin, whom Mario betrayed after finding the treasure and driving away. Without a plan, Eduardo is suddenly caught in a gun-toting feud that unravels over the course of one wild night.
To speak of anything further, including the source of the film’s titular Dante, would be spoiling Ruíz’s twists and turns. That said, it feels a bit overprotective to claim that this is a film you could ruin with spoilers. This is because, for all of the messy violence Ruíz’s characters inflict on one another, the story itself feels surprisingly tidy. Taking clear inspiration from Scorsese’s “After Hours,” the film essentially plays out like a series of A-to-BA-to-B chamber pieces, moving from location to location with obstacles quickly navigated. More often than not, it feels like Ruíz simply throws random wrenches into the plan with little forethought, serving only to slow down the characters rather than actually challenge them. Sure, it ratchets up suspense effectively, but the thrills quickly wear off, and the story develops only minimally, lacking a strong sense of direction or purpose. To say there are major story beats that one could spoil would imply these beats truly alter the story in a significant way, which they don’t, except for the film’s final 15 minutes, which recolors the film’s events so drastically with so little explanation that one has to wonder whether there was a better film left in the shock and awe of this twist ending.
“Good guys aren’t all that good, and bad guys aren’t all that bad,” utters Eduardo toward the end of the story, a sentiment that seems to be Ruíz’s primary, if only thematic focus. Throughout the film, our ensemble of characters toe the line between right and wrong: Santo will happily slice up a dead body with his razor, then humbly make a sign of the cross and mumble to Christ in the next breath; Maki lives life as a criminal, yet aspired to be – and maybe still wishes she could be – a ballet dancer when she was young; Eduardo is shaken by the actions he witnesses as a borderline hostage, yet is almost swayed to run away with Maki in a moment of uncertainty after developing a rapport with her. Yes, these characters contain multitudes, as any well-written ensemble would, and these moments bring Ruíz closest to actually capturing his influences. However, they aren’t particularly deep multitudes, nor do those multitudes manifest in many significant actions that impact the story. The film’s final sequence comes closest to fulfilling its exploration of moral ambiguity. It is genuinely engrossing as a result, but it cements the film’s true intentions too late in the runtime.
The fact that “Dante” is as engaging as it is despite Ruíz’s standard writing and directing is a testament to both the actors he is working with and the film’s strong cinematography and practical gore effects. Chino Darín as Eduardo is the film’s dramatic center, fluctuating between genuine fear, attempted confidence, and noble charm with presence and ease. His chemistry with Ester Expósito reveals a surprisingly tender side of the film, adding further layers to its exploration of morality. The array of brutal supporting performers, from popular Spanish talents such as Vicente Romero (“The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon”) and Asier Etxeandia (“Pain and Glory”), each evocatively grounds the film in its violence while further building out the film’s world through strong costuming, makeup, and hair styling. As aforementioned, this is also accomplished through stark cinematography, washed in queasy shades of green, yellow, brown, and black. The film’s gore, dirty and lit just minimally enough to feel believable, is also impressive for a film surprisingly light on action; one especially unnerving moment in the film’s final act comes very close to feeling like something a Tarantino villain would do, something gleefully torturous yet emotionally heart-wrenching to witness.
It’s easy to pick “Dante” apart for all of the elements it gets right, yet, as the credits roll, you can’t help but question what it all amounted to. It’s far from a malicious film, at least in its emotional merits, and it’s clear Hugo Ruíz has a passion for telling stories with a particular kind of city seediness. With greater ambition and a willingness to let truly unexpected chaos run wild, he could have a trilogy-capper that shoots him up the ranks of genre filmmaking. However, his stories currently feel too small, simple-minded, and straightforward to compete, no matter how much talent he hires in front of and behind the camera. It’s fun in the moment, but “Dante” is yet another film that ultimately sits in the shadows of its influences and contemporaries.
