Running Out of Time (1994)

A reckless Basque terrorist and a junkie prostitute fall in lust in the petty criminal underworld of Madrid in Imanol Uribe's loose update of Prosper Merimée's classic Carmen (by way of Juan Madrid's novel Dias Contados). Antonio (Carmelo Gómez, star of Julio Medem's The Red Squirrel and Lovers of the Arctic Circle) is a soldier in the violent guerrilla organization ETA, laying low in a crummy apartment until his next mission. His sexy neighbor Charo (Ruth Gabriel) invites herself into his place, shoots up in his bathroom, takes a bath, and then vamps her naked body in an impromptu photo shoot. Talk about meeting cute.

Gabriel's aimless Charo survives her world of bullying cops, violent drug dealers, and mercenary opportunists by simply floating along and flirting her way through. Antonio is hardly a sympathetic hero, an insolent member of a hated and feared terrorist organization (it's an affiliation that carries quite a wallop in Spain), and Gomez gives a simmering performance full of anger and frustration, a self-destructive man numb from violence. After a life of cheap sexual encounters, Charo is his salvation. For all the violence, sordid underworld scheming, and hothouse eroticism, Running Out of Time carries a passionately romantic twist to a volatile, violent tragedy.

The DVD also features a Spanish-language (English-subtitled) featurette with interviews and film clips, and a longer interview with Ruth Gabriel (who became a breakout star in the wake of her performance) discussing the edgy politics and rampant eroticism of the picture. --Sean Axmaker Amazon.com

Meh.

Running Out of Time (Imanol Uribe, 1994)

You know, as much as I love Javier Bardem, and I do love Javier Bardem, sometimes the force of his acting ability simply isn't enough to carry a movie. When you combine Javier Bardem with a good amount of nudity, and you're still checking your watch every five minutes, there's something very wrong.

The plot concerns a Basque separatist (Carmelo Gomez) involved in a scheme to blow up a police station in Madrid. Once he gets to the city and moves into a tenement house, he finds himself attracted to his next door neighbor Charo (Ruth Gabriel). Through Charo, he is exposed to the underbelly of life in Madrid-- drugs, prostitution, gangs, police harassment-- and finds it more fascinating than his terrorist activities, much to the chagrin of his partner and sometime lover Lourdes (Elvira Minguez), who's also involved in the plot.

It wouldn't be stretching too much to call this the Titanic of Spanish movies; it won nine Goyas (including Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Supporting Actor for Bardem, who plays Charo's drug connection) and was nominated for ten more. (To give you a comparison, last year's universally-praised Almodovar film Volver won five and was nominated for nine others.) And, lest I be accused of same, with that comparison I'm certainly not putting Running Out of Time into the same category as the bloated, hideous Titanic in any respect but the almost hero-worship status bestowed on it by critics in its native country. Running Out of Time is not a bad movie (like Titanic), it's just not an especially good movie (like, for example, 2001 Goya Best Picture winner The Others). As many others have noted, the performances are, in fact, quite good from all the principal characters, and even a number of the minor characters. But great characterization can only take a film so far when they don't have that much to play against, and that's the case here. Perhaps it's a case of looking at this material thirteen years later, when the basic plot elements have become so hackneyed as to produce such bloated monstrosities as United 93, but as I watched this movie, I got the feeling there wasn't anything here I hadn't seen before. (To be fair, a good number of the films to which I found myself comparing it did, in fact, come after it; the exceptions were movies that dealt with one piece of the puzzle, rather than the whole overview; at two or three points, I find myself thinking "this is an odd cross between Damage and Black Sunday.")

All that said, there are far worse ways to spend an hour and a half. Javier Bardem is always a pleasure to watch onscreen, and Ruth Gabriel spends more time out of her clothing than in it, I think. Had this been an entirely character-driven movie, it'd be brilliant; what it is, however, is a character-driven movie that wants to be plot-driven, a characteristic it shares with Grande Ecole, and in many ways it suffers the same shortcomings. ** ½
August 1, 2007

Outstanding!!!!!

This is a great film. The writing is very clever and the production is outstanding. This simply shows how beautiful Spain is and that it also (like the rest of the world) has its darkness. The situations with drug addicts and prostitutes are a tragedy no matter where you go but this is actually very well done. It also shows how absolutely no one can be trusted in that kind of world. The sex is beautiful but the it is not the focus of the film. It seems there are three different stories going on at once and they connect very well. Spanish cinema is by far better than what is produced anywhere else. Also, you get to see a great shot of Candela Peña in the tub topless. She is a hottie as well as Charo (not the cookie blonde from the seventies)who has an affair with Carmelo Gomez's character who is a terrorist in this story. This was very enjoyable and definately a film that can be seen over and over. May 25, 2005

Gritty and real

Imanol Uribe created quite a stir when he debuted this film at the San Sebastian Film Festival, which is held in the Basque country of Spain, for this film deals with the ETA, a Basque terrorist organization responsible for many acts of violence throughout Spain. Winning several Goya awards including best actor, best new actress, best film, best supporting actor, and best director, the film traces the gradual disillusionment of Antonio with his mission and his life, spurred on by his increasing involvement with Charo, a prostitute and junkie. Javier Bardem does a wonderful turn as a junkie/dealer/pimp. The DVD also includes an interview with actress Ruth Gabriel as well as a documentary on the making of the film with interviews from all the actors and a trailer of the film, which points out the similarity of the story to the classic tale of Carmen. The film is a gritty and realistic approach to the subject matter. June 20, 2001

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