Thanks for the memories!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Excellent but underrated film

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

An stylish original and intriguing Spanish film that will keep you entertained with your mouth open in a shaped O and your forehead frowned.It is a story of some gifted and sickening lucky people who gamble for luck (not for money) to get even luckier and win a competition to meet and have a duel against the luckiest of them all, the only survivor of a Nazi concentration camp, who owns a casino in a deserted place in the Canaries.Some of the ideas of the film are really original and brilliantly filmed, and that's a lot to say nowadays, when the same stories are repeated to the infinite. The scene of the race in the forest by blindfolded runners is just fantastic, so thrilling, crazy and engaging. However, every single gamble game is original in its conception and filmic realization. The movie has the mood that some experimental Spanish and European movies of the 1970s, but it is, above all, a film noir with an original plot.Leonardo Sbaraglia (as a forced and naive "believer" Tomas), Eusebio Poncela (as the unscrupulous and vengeful Federico), Antonio Dechent (as the playful and down to earth retired bullfighter), and a superb Max Von Sidow as the sad and cold "mother of all lucks" are terrific in their respective and devious roles. However, I found Monica Lopez unconvincing in her role, and this somewhat weighed down the film.Although I liked the very last scene, I thought that it wasn't appropriate, as it was too generic and inconclusive, while, minutes before, the movie had had a clear closure.

Like pieces on a chess board, the lucky or unlucky characters move, capture, or are lost. The movie asks the viewer to suspend his beliefs regarding random outcomes, and buy into the theory that some people can get luckier by taking luck from others, while leaving the losers unlucky. There is very little character development, and the confusing story loses steam between "games". The concept certainly is different, and that alone makes "Intacto" watchable. Marginally recommended for admirers of films that are creative but could require some patience from the viewer. A second viewing might be mandatory for even marginal comprehension. - MERK

Thank goodness this film was NOT Made in H'wood. Sadly, the H'wood money folks seem incapable of taking such a premise and allowing it to flow from the source---too bad.I am so glad to have seen this film. Grateful too for the subtitles, no dubbing.Enigmatic yes, slow no. Reminds me of other films with premises taken to extreme. The pace allows time to reflect on the ideas presented. It is a fine commentary on the current climate in the industrialized world...everything, even the human luck, could be a commodity under these fantastic circumstances.Simply my opinion...will recommend it to other film buffs.

Are there really adults out there like the people in this movie? Who believe in such mumbo-jumbo, that is? Blind luck, as opposed to a Lincolnesque luck, may be considered a gift from the gods. So how can it possibly be stolen when someone touches you? Consider. If you're lucky, and you want to keep that luck, get used to spending the rest of your life ALONE in bed, pal, cause sex is all ABOUT touching. So THAT'S out. And what's up with those morons running through the woods? The one's who should be cheering are the one's who smashed into the trees. Because if your idea of being lucky is WINNING that race and then playing Russian Roulette with five bullets in a six shooter, then you need help. And by the way, suppose you win? Then what? I didn't see any legal papers being drawn up saying that you now own the casino. Samuel's life didn't seem to be all that spectacular even then. I mean, what exactly did he do except walk around a casino all day making more money? Which he never spent. This is SPAIN! Or a province under the hegemony of Spain. Everybody dresses like their lives depended on it. But consider. Anything Samuel can buy, like, for dinner, I can too! Only ten to a thousand times cheaper. I shop at WinCo foods and hobnob with the great unwashed. What do I care? Another problem I had was with Sara. Why was she trying to kill that guy? All he did was rob a bank. So what? No, I'm sorry. There's no reason to be called The Luckiest Man in the World if all it means is you have to face off with still another tired contender and murder him after he tries for the umpteenth time to murder you. Some life.