Sometimes when I am looking for a football film to watch, I just get lucky and come across an entertaining movie by accident. I found this DVD at the San Mateo County library! Punto Rojo is an Argentine thriller that grips you and drags you through a ton of brutal fighting with a touch of black comedy.
The Story
The film starts with a seemingly innocent guy waiting in a car in a dusty isolated area. Listening to the radio to pass the time, Diego (Demián Salomón) enters a phone-in trivia contest about his favorite team, Racing Club. As he advances through the contest rounds, a body falls from the sky onto his windshield. A plane crashes nearby, and a surly female agent (Mariana Anghileri) walks up and challenges him for being there in place of her arranged contact. Who, it turns out, is in the trunk of the car.
The film goes backward and forward over the multitude of events that day that led to this moment. The man in the trunk (Edgardo Castro) has accidentally connected the 2 people because he has tried to carry out 2 separate criminal jobs at the same time. Diego is a kidnapping target because his brother is a backup goalkeeper for Racing. The agent is trying to recover a secret weapon. Diego and the agent battle each other fiercely without really knowing why.
The touch of black comedy is whenever Diego has a breather. Amid violence and gruesome injuries, his phone rings and he has to answer another trivia question to advance in the radio contest. Also, whenever you think someone has been killed, they pop up fighting again (no it’s not a zombie movie).
Perhaps the best way to describe this film is to use Writer/Director/Editor Nic Loreti’s own words (translated from his little post on Nov-17-2021 for his premiere at the Mar del Plata Film Fest):
Punto Rojo is my most personal film: the first one I wrote and edited alone. An experience as playful as it was intense… with a leading trio that gave everything. It has comic touches, Mad Max moments, western, Indonesian-influenced action and all the humor I could put into it. I sought to make an intense and fun film, with enormous performances that sustain it, in which each frame breathes cinema.
The soccer
There is no soccer in this film, but the charm lies in Diego’s fanatical knowledge of his club. He keeps answering the phone to demonstrate his mastery, even though by all rights he should be dead.
In conclusion
I could not google any real information about the film before watching it. I guess no one wanted to give away what the film was about. But it’s been 3 years since release, so I’m electing to spill a little.
I’m one of those people who jumps to the end of a book when I get too uncomfortable with where the plot is going. When the fighting got truly brutal, I worried if I would regret watching this film because it might be a real downer. Spoiler alert: everybody dies. Or do they? I stuck it out through the entire credits. Which you must do if you want to hear the ending that proceeds past the red dot (punto rojo) of a laser sight.
While I don’t think I can stomach watching this film again, I really enjoyed this thriller from Nic Loreti. As he says, it really breathes cinema.
There is a Swedish film that was also released in 2021, whose title is Red Dot, also in reference to the red dot of a laser sight. In Argentina, the Swedish film’s title was translated as also being Punto Rojo. I suppose that’s apropos. Why should the confusion only be within the movie?
8 Soccer Movie Mom Rating = 8
Resources:
- Released: 2021-11-23 (Mar del Plata Film Festival)
- 1 hr 20 mins
- In Spanish with English subtitles
- The title Punto Rojo translates as Red Dot but the film is also known as Red Point
- I watched this on DVD
- IMDB
- Writer/Director/Editor: Nicanor Loreti aka Nic Loreti
- Stars: Demián Salomón , Mariana Anghileri , Edgardo Castro
- Watch the Trailer in Spanish
