A Red Bear

Although the mixture of domestic drama and crime thriller doesn't completely gel in this film by Argentine writer-director Adrian Caetano--where grittiness sometimes rubs uncomfortably against sentiment (and an over-the-top final shootout seems to have wandered in from a John Woo flick)--A Red Bear nevertheless manages to hold viewers' interest throughout, thanks to the intense, compelling lead performance by Julio Chavez as Oso, a grim, violent man released from prison after a seven-year sentence for robbery and murder. Oso's new freedom pulls him in two divergent directions. On the one hand, he works hard to reconnect with his young daughter and her mother, now living with another man (in these scenes, Oso comes across as a person of complex emotions, one who can coddle a child and assist his own rival in escaping from the physical threats of creditors). But he's also drawn back into crime by a treacherous boss, and here Oso is the sort of blank figure who might have stepped out of a Sergio Leone western, implacable and invincible. The two sides of Oso's character aren't truly compatible, but Chavez almost makes them so, and that's why the film works despite its disparate, almost contradictory elements. Recommended. (F. Swietek)