Fantastic!

A Brilliant Conflict

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Alex de la Iglesia is probably one of SPain's finest filmmakers. An artist that can deliver such masterpieces as El dia de la bestia is really worth following. Here he derails with a tale the takes too long to unfold nd takes the spectator nowhere. Alex major problem lies always with the scripting of his films. Hs first film spent half of its footage presenting us a group of characters that were then killed so that the story could go in a different different direction. Same mistake here. The story starts and evolves then stops and then starts again in a different direction, etc. We are never heading in a concrete direction. The filmmaker gets lost among all the characters and their troubles never deciding which route to take. He is a good craftsman, and the film is above average in the technical department, still it's pretty boring, unusually so for a De La Iglesia comedy.

In the past 30 years, Spain has developed quite a film industry, and they can now add "800 balas" (called "800 Bullets" in English) to that list. It focuses on young Carlos Torralba (Luis Castro) getting to know his grandfather Julian (Sancho Gracia), who was Clint Eastwood's double in the spaghetti westerns and still lives in the town where they filmed the spaghetti westerns; he and the other cast members do re-enactments of the Old West. As Carlos and Julian get to know each other, a corporation announces plans to bulldoze the town, which of course doesn't sit well with the townspeople.Maybe this is one of those slice-of-life stories, but it was certainly funny. I can't think of any Spanish movie that I didn't like. Another credit to this one is the scene where Carlos gets to meet the woman who played prostitutes in the spaghetti westerns. You'll see what I mean.

800 BULLETS (3 outta 5 stars) Interesting little comedy-drama from Spain about an old western movie set in Almeria, populated with aging and forgotten stuntmen who put on live western shows for tourists. The grandson of Julian, their leader (Sancho Gracia), sneaks off to visit... trying to find out something about his dead father who accidentally died on a movie set years ago. The boy's mother (Carmen Maura) realizes that the town is a perfect location to set up a fabulous vacation resort and buys the town, putting the stuntmen out of work and leaving them no recourse but to put real bullets in their guns and make a stand. Sancho Gracia really carries this movie on his shoulders, playing the guilt-ridden "star" of the show... the rumour is that his son died because of his negligence. I wish the movie had been a little more realistic at times... the other stuntmen (and women) of the town are played a little too comically... when the time comes for the real violence to happen they don't really make a believable transition to desperate gunmen. It also becomes a bit unbelievable when the bullets start flying and no one seems to get seriously hurt. Still, the movie has some fine moments and a few very strange ones... like the 12 year old boy in bed with a prostitute... you'd never see THAT in an American movie! Western fans will be amused at some of the references (verbal and musical) to the old "spaghetti westerns"... but the movie's visual style seems more akin to '50s Hollywood westerns. (As a side note, how cool would it have been to have the character portrayed in the last scene of the movie actually played by HIMSELF? I'd definitely have been on my feet cheering... )

800 Bullets (or 800 Balas) is the story of a young boy about 12 years old named Carlos Torralba (Luis Castro). Carlos thinks his life is boring and has become quite a handful for both his mother and everyone else he comes in contact with. Eventually, he discovers he has a grandfather named Julián Torralba (Sancho Gracia), who was a movie star in the 60's.Now Julián no longer acts in movies but he works in a daily, western type live show for tourists, kind of like something you would see at Universal Studios or something of that nature. Carlos is infatuated with the fact his grandfather was an actor and decides to sneak off to meet him while he is supposed to be on a ski trip. He uses his mother's emergency credit card and he's off.At first, Carlos has the time of his life and even has his first experience with a hooker! It must have been fun filming that one for young Luis. Anyhow, he eventually sees his grandfather as the has-been he really is.This movie was a hard one for me to get all the way through. Usually subtitles do not bother me so much so I just think it's the fact that this movie was just uninteresting... boring even. It had it's moments, but most of the time, even after half an hour into it, I was just hoping it would either pick up or end. When it finally did, I felt I had wasted my time. The best part of this movie was Yoima Valdés, who played Sandra, the hooker. She was absolutely exquisite and makes me feel as if my time was not entirely wasted.