In short: Below Zero (2021)

Original title: Bajocero

Spanish police man Martín’s (Javier Gutiérrez) first night at his new posting turns out rather a lot more dangerous than he could have expected. Being one of two men (and two guys in a police car we don’t need to get into) tasked with a night transport of half a dozen or so prisoners through some very cold regions of Northern Spain is an uncommon enough first night. Said transport being attacked, Martín’s colleagues getting killed and things turning into a siege scenario and not the break-out it first seems to be certainly makes the night pretty singular.

This Spanish Netflix premiere directed by Lluís Quílez is a pretty decent little thriller. For its first act, it does tend to rely rather too heavily on very well-worn genre tropes and character types, but come the second act, it does put a bit of effort into humanizing the walking-talking tropes a little, so that the efficiently staged violence and the expertly worked siege movie variations surrounding them get a bit more emotional impact. The actors do their best here too, bringing more personality to the characters than the script strictly shows; but then, that’s really the proper low budget action thriller approach to this sort of situation, unless you’re Howard Hawks working from a Leigh Brackett script, or John Carpenter.

And Quílez does good work with the various suspense set-ups, using the prison transport vehicle in various clever ways for action and suspense.

The only elements of the movie I’m not too fond of are its weird knee-jerk “fuck yeah! torture and vigilantism!” ending (particularly given what the film’s main vigilante has done throughout the film), and the sort of desaturated, greenish colour scheme I had hoped had died with the turn of the 00’s into the 2010’s. Well, that, and the practically complete absence of women from the film.