Chronicle of an Escape

64

IFC First Take (Spanish minutes)
and Adrián Caetano
Rodrigo De la Serna , Pablo Echarri , Nazareno Casero , Lautaro Delgado , Matías Marmorato , Martín Urruty , César Albarracín , and Diego Alonso

Rating: R for brutality and torture, nudity and language

Summary: A true story of terror and survival. Buenos Aires, 1977. A task force working for the fascist Argentine military government kidnaps Claudio Tamburrini, goalkeeper of a B-league soccer team, and takes him to a clandestine detention center known as Sere Mansion: a forbidding old building in the suburban neighborhood of Moron. Claudio enters a living hell of interrogations, beatings, humiliations & betrayals. A nightmare world of arbitrary lunatic rules and relentless violence, mental and physical. Alongside other young detainees, he battles to survive while awaiting his fate to be decided. After four months of imprisonment, with execution looking certain, Claudio and three other prisoners make their desperate move. Forcing open a window in the middle of a thunderstorm, completely naked, they jump into the void. Their flight into the future begins. (IFC Films)

Clark Collis
Entertainment Weekly:
(83) The result is blessed with great performances; director Israel Adrián Caetano lets events speak -- and plead and weep -- for themselves.

Andrew O'Hehir
Salon.com:
(80) The film is taut and ruthlessly constructed, with odd flashes of humor and a white-knuckle pace. Rodrigo de la Serna ("The Motorcycle Diaries") gives a committed performance as Tamburrini, today a philosophy professor in Sweden.

V.A. Musetto
New York Post:
(75) This film is both a warning about abuse of government power and a reassurance that justice will sometimes triumph.

Deborah Young
Variety:
(60) Turns the chilling story of Argentina's military regime and its large scale political murders into a tense, exciting escape thriller. Though functional on its own terms, this fourth feature by Israel Adrian Caetano feels hollow at the core, leaving a feeling of lingering disappointment over a missed opportunity to probe recent history.

Nick Pinkerton
Village Voice:
(50) Chronicle might be utterly uncompromising in its "you are there" visceral style--or just unresourceful. I tend toward the latter reading.

Stephen Holden
The New York Times:
(50) Because Chronicle of an Escape doesn’t seriously scrutinize Argentine history during the years of the so-called dirty war, when the ruling military junta sought to eliminate anyone deemed hostile, it lacks a stinging moral authority.

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