TIMECRIMES (2007 - Spanish)

Studio:       Magnet Releasing
Director:    Nacho Vigalondo
Writer:       Nacho Vigalondo
Producer:   Javier Ibarretxe, Eduardo Carneros, Esteban Ibarretxe
Stars:     Karra Elejalde, Candela Fernandez, Nacho Vigalondo, Barbara Goenaga

Review Score:

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Summary:

An undressed woman in the woods, a stalker with a bandaged face, and a pair of scissors become three important puzzle pieces when an ordinary man stumbles into a time travel scenario.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Hector and his wife Clara have moved into a new house in a secluded area. Hector brings home a table for his wife to assemble. The phone rings, but when Hector answers it, no one responds. Hector reverse dials and receives an answering machine. Clara enters and Hector drops the phone while it is still on. Using his binoculars in the backyard, Hector spots a woman undressing in the woods. Clara takes the car and leaves Hector alone.

Hector goes to the woods to investigate. On the way, he spots an overturned dumpster and a bicycle lying on its side. Hector finds the nude woman seemingly unconscious against a rock when a man stabs him in the arm with a pair of scissors. Hector flees and uses his binoculars to look for the man. He spots the man wearing an overcoat and a bandaged face. The man turns and makes binocular eyes in Hector’s direction, inspiring Hector to run. Hector eventually makes it to a building where he breaks a window to get inside. On a wall, he spots a crude map drawn on the reverse of a calendar. Hector finds a walkie-talkie in a laboratory. He tells the man on the receiver what happened. The man tells him to come up to another building. He warns Hector that the bandaged man is still chasing him and he must hurry. When Hector makes it to the building, the bearded scientist there tells Hector to hide in a hatch filled with liquid.

When Hector exits the hatch, the scientist does not know who he is. The scientist explains that Hector went back in time. Hector uses his binoculars and sees himself and Clara with the table back at the house. The scientist tells Hector he is now Hector 2 and he must lay low until Hector 1 comes to the lab and enters the hatch, allowing Hector 2 to take his place and keep the time loop intact. The scientist explains the paradox by drawing on the reverse of a calendar. Hector then calls his house and discovers he is making the call he received earlier. Hector steals a car and leaves the property. He stops the car and another vehicle knocks his car into a tree. Hector bandages his bloody forehead. The woman from the woods comes to help Hector. She cuts his bandage with a pair of scissors. Hector takes an overcoat from a pile of trash in the road. He then convinces the woman to follow him into the woods where he forces her to undress so that Hector 1 can see her with his binoculars. He accidentally knocks her out when she subsequently escapes, but he manages to perform all the activities that he saw from the bandaged man earlier.

Hector returns to his house and tries to reason with a woman running from him. He thinks it is the woman from the woods, but when she falls from the roof and dies while escaping, Hector realizes her coat and haircut indicate it is actually his wife Clara who died. Hector then uses the walkie-talkie to call the scientist and instructs the scientist to convince Hector 1 that he is being chased and needs to hide in the hatch.

Hector 2 returns to the lab, but the scientist throws a battery for the machine into the darkness. Hector threatens to destroy the lab when the scientist refuses to let him go back a second time. The scientist warns that using the machine again will create a third Hector. Hector realizes that the scientist threw the battery away because he knew Hector would ask to use the machine again. The scientist explains that Hector 3 instructed him not to allow Hector 2 to go back again. He explains that Hector was actually the second Hector to go back in time and that the first Hector showed up only 30 seconds before Hector 2 and forced the scientist to ready the hatch for Hector 2 to go back in time. Hector forces the scientist to send him back again anyway.

Hector becomes Hector 3 and tells the scientist to ready for Hector 1’s arrival. Hector 3 escapes in another vehicle that he uses to run Hector 2 off the road and into the tree as seen earlier. Hector returns home where both Clara and the woman from the woods are running from Hector 2. While Clara hides, Hector convinces the woman from the woods to hide from the bandaged man by wearing his wife’s coat and cutting her hair to look like Clara. She ends up as the one who dies when falling off the roof. After Hector 2 leaves to complete the time loop, Hector retrieves his wife and they sit in the backyard.

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Review:

If you are reading this review as a decision factor regarding whether or not to see the movie, stop.  “Timecrimes” belongs in that category of film where knowing as little as possible beforehand is in the best interest of complete immersion.  Know only that “Timecrimes” is highly entertaining and well worth the investment.  However, should you need more convincing, or just a bit more information, no more about the story will be discussed here than is revealed on the back cover of the DVD.

The title already discloses the biggest twist of the film.  That time travel is the primary hook would otherwise not be obvious until the story was well underway.  Hector is an unassuming man who plans to spend his afternoon lounging lazily in the backyard while bird watching.  After a seemingly unrelated sequence of events, Hector finds he has inadvertently traveled back in time while escaping a masked stranger armed with a pair of scissors.  Anyone spending too much time comprehending the images on both sides of the DVD box will be able to fill in a few blanks, but the best details remain a mystery right through the final scene.

Hector stepped into the central mystery of “Timecrimes” straight from the Everyman mold of Hitchcock classics such as “North by Northwest” and “Rear Window.”  Innocuously armed with binoculars, much like Jimmy Stewart’s Jeff Jefferies, Hector raises his hands at precisely the wrong time, much like Cary Grant’s Roger Thornhill, and finds his life changed permanently from one simple action.  And that is only the first lesson in Hector’s crash course on how casual actions have unfathomable consequences.

Hector embodies many more of those hallmark Everyman traits.  Butterfingered, balding, and with a paunchy midsection, Hector could be a stand-in for anyone’s next-door neighbor, even though he may be slightly more thoughtful and resourceful than the average Johnny Lunchpail.  He barely wastes any time puzzling over the incredulity of his errant stumble through the space-time continuum.  Instead, Hector accepts his circumstances and concentrates on barreling forward towards a solution.  And what his efforts give the audience is a brisk thriller with a balanced pace and fantastic fantasy.

Depending on its use in film, time travel logic can be a tough sell.  Sci-fi extravaganzas are typically afforded more latitude in their science when time travel is just one minor facet in a greater spectacle of chrome skeleton cyborg warfare.  “Timecrimes,” like Shane Carruth’s “Primer,” takes a thoughtful approach to time travel and the real world effects that such a possibility might imply.  But time travel is not the central focus.  It is only one element to tell the story.  The broader narrative is one ordinary man’s journey to bring himself back to his ordinary life, despite being caught in an extremely extraordinary situation.

With a pen and paper, an armchair academic could plot out the logic of “Timecrimes” and highlight more than one factual inaccuracy with the laws of physics.  But why would anyone want to?  That is not what “Timecrimes” considers most important.  Sharp suspense is.

Those who are off put by mindbending narratives such as “Memento,” or who prefer more casual entertainment than a David Lynch film might allow, have little cause to fear “Timecrimes.”  It is intelligent without being overly complex.  “Timecrimes” requires just enough mental engagement to stay with the plot so that there is never enough time to slow down and entertain the disbelief, but it is never so far ahead as to foster confusion.  The script is not interested in proving how clever it is.  Nor is it interested in convincing anyone of the plausibility of its scenario.  Rare is the movie that is both smart and universally accessible, as well as thoroughly entertaining, and “Timecrimes” delivers the complete package.

NOTE: The Spanish title is "Los Cronocrímenes."

Review Score:  90

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