EL NINO is a flawed Spanish thriller from expert director Daniel Monzon (THE KOVAK BOX) who creates a stylish and fine-looking movie saddled with, unfortunately, a somewhat meandering and overlong plot. The narrative clocks in at around two hours and fifteen minutes in length, but at least forty-five minutes of that running time could readily have been excised in order to make a better paced, more exciting film.
The setting is Gibraltar, which looks exceptionally beautiful thanks to the cinematography, and the subject is the drug smuggling route to Morocco and back. There's a tableau of characters, the best of whom are the investigating drug agents led by Luis Tosar (SLEEP TIGHT), but the bad news is that they're off-screen for long stretches of time, leaving the film in the hands of a less experienced cast. Instead we follow youthful drug smuggler Nino and his attempts to make a fortune from the trade.
The problem the film has is that Nino just isn't a very interesting character and the guy playing him is a bit wooden. He's very self-centred and out for what he can get, and the actor just doesn't have the charisma to make him likable at all. A romantic sub-plot between him and a Moroccan girl is almost unwatchable, it's so dull. Monzon does shoot a handful of chase scenes typically involving boats and helicopters which are expertly done, so it's a shame he couldn't focus more on the thrills rather than the padding; if he'd done so then EL NINO was shaping up to be a minor classic of its genre. As it stands, it's just average.
The setting is Gibraltar, which looks exceptionally beautiful thanks to the cinematography, and the subject is the drug smuggling route to Morocco and back. There's a tableau of characters, the best of whom are the investigating drug agents led by Luis Tosar (SLEEP TIGHT), but the bad news is that they're off-screen for long stretches of time, leaving the film in the hands of a less experienced cast. Instead we follow youthful drug smuggler Nino and his attempts to make a fortune from the trade.
The problem the film has is that Nino just isn't a very interesting character and the guy playing him is a bit wooden. He's very self-centred and out for what he can get, and the actor just doesn't have the charisma to make him likable at all. A romantic sub-plot between him and a Moroccan girl is almost unwatchable, it's so dull. Monzon does shoot a handful of chase scenes typically involving boats and helicopters which are expertly done, so it's a shame he couldn't focus more on the thrills rather than the padding; if he'd done so then EL NINO was shaping up to be a minor classic of its genre. As it stands, it's just average.