Tercer Grado (Geoffrey Cowper, 2015): Spain

Reviewed by Jonathan Lindgren, Santa Barbara Film Festival 2016, Antioch University.

A European version of a western movie with some big questionmarkes or mistakes. The director Geoffrey Cowper makes his debut with this movie. For what he  gets a very good grade, with the fast dialogues, the slowmotion scene and the bright colors. All this makes a very intense low budget film. Take this and add superb music and you get a movie that is worth this much attention as this film has got.

Some perfect editing between slowmotion and fast cutted scenes to slow scenes and close ups. The untried main actor Jesús Lloveras truly pulls this movie on his own. With so many debuts and untried people making this movie, it’s kind of remarkeble what the outcome is. 

Mark (Jesus Lloveras) is a prisoner who is out on day release and meets a beautiful girl Mia (Sara Casanovas), after a night together Mark drops of Mia at her job. Just outside takes a robbery place and Mark finds him self in the middle of it. Knowing that he got depts that his brother have to pay, he starts to stalk the robbers to collect the money for self use instead. A days journey begins in the hunt of the money. Which at the end of the day turns out to be a long journey for Mark.

With very carefully made music for every shot and intense editing, this movies is truly very suspense and a thriller worth seeing. The questinmarks is all for the costumes and make up. A wound that change places from right to left side of his forehead and then from nowhere disappears. Some of that kind of small mistakes. But in my opionion made the small mistakes the film better. Because you never felt secure during the film, in matter of fact, you never know whats going to happen. The mistakes made it unpredictable.

7/10 and absolutly one of the best movies I saw during this festival.