Spain does seem to like its gritty, atmospheric police thrillers.
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This would be in the same vein that Russia loves its dirty ruminations on the depravity of existence, or Bollywood loves its romantic comedies, or England loves its kind of middling blarf (sorry England, in music you are unsurpassed. In movies... Not so much). Netflix picks up a lot of these Spanish cop thrillers, so I watch many of them. I find that they are the Chinese food of cinema... They’re pretty enjoyable, but then a week later I’ve forgotten about them.
“The Marked Woman” is slightly more memorable, because it’s not only about the mundane, averagely interesting cops (@#$! the police!), it’s about “The marked woman” herself, Alicia. At the start of the movie, she’s a woman found in a shipping container who has been brutally tortured and has no memory of who she is or why she’s there. At the end of the movie, she’s a full-on superhero. It turns out... “The Marked Woman” is a superhero origin story. That’s pretty cool.
Or, at least, it *should* have been pretty cool. Instead, it was just kind of ‘aight. For one thing... In the first act, Alicia is attacked by an assassin in her hospital room. It turns out, she has some pretty wicked parkour and combat skills, and the result is an actual thrilling chase and fight scene. As it turns out... It would be the only action scene in the entire film. If you’re making a movie about a superhero, and she has elite combat skills, I would think you might want to show them off more. I’m not asking for “The Raid”, but another action sequence or two with Alicia kickin’ some pendejo ass would have been welcome.
But the far more egregious problem with Alicia is that I don’t know anything about her. I know she was tortured, and over the course of the movie she slowly learns more about her past. She was a cybersecurity expert. Her sister is missing, and Alicia is looking for her. These are all external circumstances. We never learn a thing about *why*, emotionally, Alicia needed to become a superhero. What void within her is filled by the journey? The answer to THAT question is the difference between a tortured woman in dire circumstances I can empathize with, and a fully-fledged character that can carry a movie. Why did she work in cybersecurity? Was she, or her sister, scammed? Did she just want lots of money working in the tech sector? Does she love numbers and puzzles and that was the best outlet for her to flex those skills? We don’t know!!
For a movie with a runtime of almost two hours and a half, you would think we could invest *some* of that time learning about our hero and what motivates her. Instead, all that time is filled with... Stuff. Plot. Finding evidence that takes you to location A where you find additional evidence that leads you to location B where you find a bad guy who eventually reveals that you need to go to location C. Just going from setpiece to setpiece like a police procedural Indiana Jones, except without the action or humor. A film like “The Usual Suspects” might be driven by pure plot and dialogue while knowing little to nothing about the characters... But the plot of “The Usual Suspects” is an ensnaring web of deceit and fun, and dialogue is crisp and @#$!ing hilarious. It’s a really, really high bar. Usually pure plot-driven movies end up like “The Marked Woman”... Somewhat engaging but ultimately pretty soulless.
Of course, we have the standard tropes of the genre here. Corruption and payoffs abound in the police department. It’s almost like the movie is blurring the line between cop and criminal (See: Every cop movie ever made #Adaptation). Our forensic psychologist, Ripoll, has some nonsense from her past that she needs to deal with, but again, we don’t really delve into it or learn much about *her* either. She was on leave for psych evaluation, now she’s back. Like Alicia and the cargo container... Those are just circumstances. It doesn’t tell us much about what drives Ripoll. I also hope you like that name, because I feel like people yelled “Ripoll!” about 7894728798 times. It’s a decent name. Maybe not as good as Rip Van Winkle. Or Rip Torn. Ripoll doesn’t have a penis, so unlike Rip Torn, she can’t be in a scene where a woman is randomly batting his penis around for no apparent reason #Themanwhofelltoearth, which I guess is our loss.
What movie was I talking about again?
10/10