Don't Tempt Me

One of those weird cinematic contraptions that depict the forces of heaven and hell intervening in human affairs, Don't Tempt Me chronicles the battle for the soul of an over-the-hill boxer, on whose fate--for reasons never satisfactorily explained--the future of the whole system of paradise and damnation depends. The only really clever element in writer/director Agustín Díaz Yanes' script is the depiction of both Elysium and Hades as big corporations, with various bureaucratic levels keeping ledgers on the relative success of their rival ventures and each place having a distinctive ambiance: to wit, heaven is a sophisticated nightclub where everybody speaks French, and hell is a gritty warehouse where heavily-accented English is the norm. You might recognize a couple of the cast members--Gael Garcia Bernal (Y Tu Mamá También) is the devil, and Penelope Cruz (Vanilla Sky) is the temptress he dispatches to pose as the boxer's cousin (her heavenly counterpart, played by Victoria Abril, impersonates the pugilist's wife). But the boxer himself (Demián Bichir) is a dull, bovine fellow, and overall the picture manages to be both contrived and confusing; even the wildest fantasy needs to play by some set of coherent rules in order to hold one's interest, and this one doesn't. Not recommended. (F. Swietek)