Argentina, 1 9 7 4. Lawyer Benjamin Esposito is investigating a case in which a woman, Liliana de Morales, was raped and killed in her home. He promises Liliana's husband Ricardo to catch the criminal. Despite the assistance by partner Pablo and the new department chief Irene, there are no clues, until he spots a lad, Gomez, always looking at Liliana in the old photos. Gomez is nowhere to be found. However, Benjamin and Pablo realize Gomez is a fan of the Racing football club, and thus manage to find him among the crowd at a stadium. The arrested Gomez confesses the murder of Liliana, but is released anyway when he becomes a hitman working for the anti-communist government during the Dirty War. Fearing for his life, Benjamin hides in a province. 25 years later, Benjamin meets Ricardo, now living on an isolated farm. Ricardo claims to have tracked down and killed Gomez, but it turns out he instead locked Gomez in his jail in the house, forcing him to serve the life sentence.
An instant classic, "The Secret in Their Eyes" is a thoroughbred example of filmmaking finesse, and a storyline that works both as a crime flick and a history lesson about Argentina's Dirty War with wider implications in the end. The film takes half an hour until it gets going, since its start is slow, conventional and it takes a lot of time for the set-up, yet there is a vision behind all of this, and it is remarkable how all the pieces and little details complete each other and meticulously unite in the grand ending to form a harmonious whole where everything has its why and because. An hour into the film, there is a virtuoso 6-minute scene done in one take, in which a drone flies over a stadium, over the audience, until it descends among the crowd to the two main protagonists, investigators Benjamin and Pablo, who browse through the fans, until they find the suspect Gomez and chase him through the corridors of the stadium, whereas the twist ending is striking. Some minor flaws are easily forgiven, such as the sequence where Benjamin and Irene trick the suspect Gomez into admitting the rape and murder of Liliana by teasing him ("Due to the depth of her vaginal injuries, we may deduce that the assailant was very well-endowed. Obviously, they're not talking about this microbe. He must have a peanut", until an angry Gomez stands up and unzips his penis to show it to Irene), which is kind of a stretch. The sequence where the now released Gomez, who was "incorporated" into the Peron administration black ops to eliminate communists during the Cold War, enters the elevator with Benjamin and Irene inside, and just loads his pistol, is masterfully chilling and suspenseful. The director Juan Jose Campanella managed to assemble a great little film and shoot above the goal he set out to do, delivering a universally recognizable story that was adequately critically recognized.
Grade:+++
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