Carancho

Some movies are described as explosive: this is positively eardrum-perforating. It's a brutal but very smart contemporary noir from the Argentinian director Pablo Trapero, and it could be his best film to date, the clearest and most effective fusion of his dual gifts for realism and thrills. Something in its inspired cynicism took me back to Trapero's early feature El Bonaerense (2002), about the robber who takes cover by applying to become a cop. Ricardo Darín, with his ruined and leonine handsomeness, is perfectly cast as Sosa, known as the "Carancho", or vulture. He's a disgraced lawyer now working as an ambulance-chaser, showing up at horrific car wrecks and encouraging the survivors to sue. More than this, he has a crooked scam going, encouraging desperate souls to walk in front of cars to get the compensation; he stages these calamities and tips off complicit ambulance drivers so they can arrive instantly – in return for a cut of the insurance payout, very little of which will trickle down to the ostensible victim. Sosa's vocation – his dodgy contacts among the paramedics call it "social work" for Argentina's underclass – brings him into contact with troubled hospital doctor Luján, played by Trapero regular Martina Gusmán. Luján and Soso fall passionately for each other, an event that triggers a flaring of Sosa's conscience. Their love story has a strange and unexpected nobility in this cynical gangland. The chaotic and violent finale is breathtakingly horrible, and all too appropriate for a group of people making a good living out of poor people being hit by cars. The final confrontation even has a little of the excitement of the failed heist in Reservoir Dogs. Darín is convincing in that most difficult male role: the intelligent tough guy. He perpetually endures horrible beatings and needs to be stitched up and mopped down – his face is much of the time discoloured with bruises and caked in blood. Luján is a survivor, enduring a daily war zone in the hospital's emergency room, where fistfights and gunfights break out among the patients. Together, Luján and Sosa have a Bonnie and Clyde heroism. Let's hope Carancho isn't remade. No Hollywood pairing would have a fraction of this steam heat.