‘Objects’: the anti-hero who devours his own mystery

It has been nearly ten years since Jorge Dorado made his film debut with ‘Mindscape’, for which he was nominated for the Goyas for Best First-Time Director, after a long and successful television career, with the acclaimed TV movie ‘Teresa’ and as director of series such as ‘El Ministerio del Tiempo’, ‘Gigantes’, ‘Elpier’ or ‘The Head’. His return is with a genre proposal, ‘Objects’, with which he shows Álvaro Morte’s affinity for the thrillerin a film in which he plays a man tormented by his past.

‘Objects’ has a great start, with Mario, a protagonist who works in the Lost and Found area of ​​Madrid and who receives a briefcase that was at the bottom of the Manzanares River for several years. Mario, who from a personal tragedy dedicates himself body and soul to his work, converting things that no one claims and recycling them creatively, opens the briefcase and find the skeleton of what appears to be a child. Thus a conspiracy will arise in the search for truth about why a baby ended up in a suitcase at the bottom of the river.

That beginning is great, creating a splendid atmosphere, which manages to fully involve the public and evokes the style of the Nordic thrillerWell, that start could very well be that of a delivery of “Department Q Cases” or “Millennium”. But that flash of genius dissolves into a plot that promised and that, Finally, he goes elsewhere, leaving aside the police plot to become a film with melodramatic nuances, with which to redeem the protagonist.

A promising start … which has given so much more

It is true that the turns the film takes are unexpected, but not for the better. What would have been a splendid cinematic proposal, in which the darkest Madrid was seen and in which unmasking a network of trafficking in women ends up leading to a film in which a tormented man unable to cooperate with justice chooses to become the savior of a lady in distress. Yes, Álvaro Morte knows how to defend this profile of characters, as seen in ‘During the storm’ or ‘The paper house’, but that’s not enough. Secondly, It seems that Verónica Echegui is tremendously wasted in a role that was for so much moreas her character initially evoked police heroines from the novels of Lorenzo Silva or Dolores Redondo.

what does it start with a correct atmosphere, with that air of a film noir, of a Nordic thriller, ends up being a proposal full of archetypes in which the anti-hero ends up devouring his own plot. The film ends up leaving a feeling of half-throttle proposal that sacrifices the interest of its premise in an excessive protagonism of the torments of its male protagonist. An opportunity that has given much more.

Note: 6

The best: The first few minutes, in which you can breathe a splendid atmosphere of tension that knows how to capture the interest of the public.

Worse: See how his storyline deflates, something that happens from the moment the Death character enters the hotel.