Timecrimes (Nacho Vigalondo, 2007): Spain

Reviewed by Jason Sanders. Viewed at the AFI Film Festival, ArcLight Hollywoo

Going into the movie, I was thinking it would be a very sci-fi kind of movie.  Again, just like a previous movie, i was wrong about Timecrimes.  The film’s organization was absolutely amazing, and the screenplay was magnificent. 

The story starts out with a couple moving into the hills of Spain to relax.  Hector, the protagonist, sits on a lawn chair to do some sight seeing, and notices a lifeless girl getting undressed, and decides to investigate.  From this point on, Hector’s life takes many different changes and finds himself literally living deja-vu.  

Each scene is perfectly set up to support the story of time travel and avoids any problems with plot holes or any irregularities in the story.  I was blown away to finally see a film about time travel that thought of every single problem that other films of the genre had, and Vigalondo took it a step up.  

Karra Elejalde, who plays Hector in the film, did such an amazing performance that I thought he was Hector with a huge problem.  I rarely get drawn into a film so much to find myself believing the character, but this was one of the few films that did that to me.  Elejalde shows such passion in this role, and shows so many different changes throughout the film.  Very rarely do films show characters go through so many changes.  If they do, most of the time it is not believable.

This film is for anyone who loves mystery and drama.  The plot is easy to follow, yet it is one of the most complicated plots I have seen.