Días Contados (1994) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski) and Tuna

This highly acclaimed Spanish movie (literally translated as "Numbered Days", as in "his days are numbered") is on a Region 1 DVD as "Running Out of Time". It is based on the eponymous novel by Juan Madrid, which was in turn a loose modernization of the opera Carmen. The movie maintains a certain affinity with the opera in that a street performer sings part of an aria from Carmen in one scene.

Although the director receives spiritual grounding from those Spanish roots, the style and theme of the movie is pure Luc Besson. Writer/director Imanol Uribe mirrors Luc Besson's style so closely that you'd think it was a Besson movie if it were in French or English instead of Spanish. Like Besson's La Femme Nikita and The Professional, it is a brilliantly photographed tres-cool character study of violent hard-core criminals and other lowlifes. It is different from simplistic TV treatments in that it breathes life into the seedy and despicable characters, despite portraying their sins graphically. If you read about some of these characters in the newspaper, like Besson's hit man Leon, or Uribe's terrorist Antonio, neither of whom has a last name, you would think they must be soulless beasts, but these movies examine them as the complex humans that some people in their professions must be.

Actually, if these films stopped at showing them realistically, I would be much happier. Unfortunately, they go past realism and actually romanticize them. That makes it difficult to remember that they are terrorists, hit men, and junkies, that the terrorist kills innocent bystanders and babies, and the junkies will all die young, ugly, and desperate.

Oh, well, I guess it's just a story, and a good one at that, with an appropriate surprise ending.

Antonio is a Basque terrorist who has been sent to Madrid with two confederates to blow up a police station. His cover is that he is a news photographer on assignment to portray a run-down neighborhood, therefore needful of detailed photographs of the neighborhood around the station. To avoid identification and scrutiny, he camps out in the kind of place where nobody asks any questions, a fleabag cash-only apartment building, where he ends up falling in love with one of his neighbors, an extroverted junkie prostitute named Charo.

The soul of the movie is the romance between Antonio and Charo, which is both steamy and loving. She initiates contact by taking a bath in his apartment and giving him (and us) some very explicit looks at her anatomy. They consummate the relationship in a romantically rococo Moorish hotel in Grenada, in the shadow of La Alhambra. The feelings stirred up by this relationship serve to force Antonio into a self-examination about his commitment to the Basque movement and its causes. He is a man numbed by violence for whom the relationship with Charo represents an emotional opening. For Charo, the soft-spoken and somewhat refined terrorist, who makes love to her sweetly, represents an escape from the drugs and tawdry, loveless sex that dominates her own life.

The film is somewhat inconsistent in the depth of its character studies. Although we get to know the two main characters and her best girlfriend, the rest of the characters in the film seem to be lurking around with uncertain motives, as if simply placed there to provide colorful set pieces in the background. The Basque has an ex-girlfriend popping up from time to time in the role of one of his confederates, but we don't really get much insight into why they ever were together, or why they fell apart, or what she is really like. On the other hand, I enjoyed some of those scenes with the undeveloped characters, just as I enjoy some of the offbeat characters that wander briefly into Besson's films.

Good film. If you like Leon or La Femme Nikita, I predict you'll like this as well, with the added benefit of plenty of steamy sex and nudity, but if you're like me, you will have a difficult time forcing yourself to forget that he is a terrorist. Unfortunately, that is a fact of life in this type of movie. Besson, for example, wants us to empathize with Leon, even though he is a professional killer.

It is thematically akin to Carmen, in that the protagonists are a Basque terrorist and a hooker. Antonio (Carmelo Gómez) comes to Madrid to set off several car bombs, culminating in one aimed at police headquarters. He is posing as a photographer. His neighbors are a heroin addict named Charo (Ruth Gabriel) and her roommate (Candela Peña), who are sort of a prostitution "tag team." Charo strips and dances for the John, while the roommate sucks him off.

The terrorist and the hooker meet one day when Charo is locked out of her apartment. She ends up naked in Antonio's tub, and poses for him when he reveals his cover identity as a photography. She won't allow him to touch her, however, because she wants to be faithful to her boyfriend, who is in prison.

Gómez is smitten, and pursues Charo, which infuriates fellow terrorist Elvira Mínguez. From there, the story is evenly divided among terrorism and sex, all leading up to a fantastic surprise ending.