A Netflix no-no from Spain: Gonzalo Bendala's nitwit thriller, WHEN ANGELS SLEEP

That world-famous (and now seeming to exist just about everywhere in the world) streaming site Netflix has gifted us with lots of worthwhile movies to view, including more and more of which the company has itself distributed. Every so often, though, a real clunker appears in the mix, one that's dumb enough to make a warning worthwhile. Such a film is the new WHEN ANGELS SLEEP, written and directed by Gonzalo Bendala.

The original Spanish poster for the movie, shown below, asks the question: Cuando los angeles duermen, quien nos protege? which translates, TrustMovies believes, to When angels sleep, who protects us?  Here's a better and more useful question the movie-maker might have asked: When every decision made by every character in your film is completely stupid, how can your audience be expected to give a shit?

By the end of this 91-minute would-be dramatic thriller, I found myself talking back aloud to the screen so often, usually saying "For god's sake, don't do that!" that I had pretty much gone hoarse. This is particularly too bad because the film's cast deserves much better.

Lead actor Julián Villagrán (shown below, of Extraterrestrial) plays one of the heads of a Spanish insurance company who is trying to get home in time for his young daughter's birthday party. He is several hours' drive away, however, and so he makes just about every dumb decision possible in order -- or so it begins to appear -- not to get there.

Then we're introduced to a teenage girl who apparently has parent problems. She hates 'em, but from what we're allowed to see, they're merely typically clueless-about-teens, while she seems angry/ugly enough for hospitalization. As played by Ester Expósito (shown at top and below, of the recent and much better Netflix series, Elite), the young lady quickly tries your patience to the point where you're dismayed to realize that you'd be more than happy to see her dead.

And then we have our anti-hero's wife (Marian Álvarez, below), who -- in accepting her hubby's nonsensical excuses while also accepting the advances of next-door neighbor who's helping with that birthday party in lieu of dad --  seems to alternate between dumb and dumber. And if you imagine that the supporting characters are any better, give it up. They're not only just as dumb -- but a whole lot nastier.

Except the police. They're stupider than everyone else put together. Please: Tell me that Spain's cops, including the one in charge of the others here, are smarter than this?! Somebody? Anybody? Guess not. The really weird thing about this movie is that its ending is simply terrific. Or would be, if what preceded it had a trace of actual truth and did not seem instead to have been manipulated within an inch of its life.

This denouement could hardly be darker -- or more directly contradicting one's hopeful idea of any justice existing in our world. There's zero to be found here, which is a difficult, but sometimes salutary thing to accept. Unfortunately, instead of giving us reason/evidence to have to deal with this thesis, we get an uber crappy movie to precede this wonderfully dank and existential ending, one that is worthy, yes, of Beckett and/or Céline.

Streaming now via Netflix, When Angels Sleep, won't put you to sleep. But it will probably make you plenty angry -- and for more bad reasons than good ones.

DVD stay-away: CONTRABAND proves the hands-down dumbest movie of the year

Icelandic filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur has made three very good movies in his home country (101 Reykjavík, The Sea and Jar City) and one that's pretty good (Inhale) and another that's truly godawful (CONTRABAND, out on DVD/Blu-ray this past week) here in the USA. (TrustMovies has not seen his earlier made-in-the-USA movie A Little Bit of Heaven so he can't speak for the quality of that one.) Rather than posit that the moviemaker is uncomfortable off his home base, I would instead suggest that Baltasar, shown below, ought not let go of the writing chores completely, as he has done with Contraband. (He either adapted or co-wrote his other films--except for Inhale--and his absence dearly shows.)

If Contraband were created (deliberately, that is) as a comedy, along the lines of The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight or The Ladykillers, it might have worked. That would have taken some wit, however, which is in very short supply here. As is irony. Or humor of any kind. When everyone in a movie -- good guys, bad guys, even guys we don't give a shit about -- can't do a single thing correctly, we either start to laugh aloud, or soon give up on what quickly becomes an extremely stupid movie. Surely someone can do something right here? No, they can't. When they finally do (in the case of the lead character played by Mark Wahlberg, below left, with co-star Ben Foster), the results are so utterly unbelievably and simple-minded as to beggar imagination.

The movie looks good, however (Barry Ackroyd shot it) and moves fast, though not fast enough for its nearly two-hour running time. Locations are nice (New Orleans and Panama City), and the cast is filled with actors who ought to know better - from Kate Beckinsale to Giovanni Ribisi and Lukas Haas to Diego Luna. By the time this movie ends, given the stupidity on display, nobody -- good, bad or indifferent -- should still be alive. That they are is a monument to dumb, lazy screenwriting. Supposedly based on an original Icelandic film called Reykjavik-Rotterdam (a hit on its home turf that ran a mere 88 minutes and in which, coincidentally, filmmaker Kormákur starred as an actor but did not direct), this overblown excuse for a thriller simply embarrasses.

Contraband is out now on DVD and Blu-ray, for sale or rental, and is probably available on streaming of some sort. Check out the usual suspects if you insist on seeing it.