Culture

Directed by Juan Jose Campanella
(3.5/5)

The Secret In Their Eyes (El Secreto de sus Ojos) is a riveting murder mystery of the highest order. The film follows Benjamin Esposito, a recently retired federal justice agent. Benjamin is still kept awake at night by an investigation he was involved in 20 years earlier, concerning the brutal rape and murder of a young woman named Lilliana Colotto. Wanting to come to terms with the past, and find new answers, he decides to write a book about the case.
Through a series of flashbacks tracing Benjamin and his alcoholic co-worker Pablo’s efforts to track down Lilliana’s killer, the case unfolds. Personally affected by the grief of Lilliana’s widowed husband, Benjamin feels a responsibility to solve the case, which leads him to go perhaps beyond the call of duty. He seeks to deliver real justice, something difficult to achieve in the corrupt Argentian justice system of the time.
At 127 minutes, this film is quite long. There were many moments where I thought, “Oh, this is the end,” only to see the story take another twist. This was not necessarily a bad thing, but for those with a limited attention span, just a warning. The convincing, sometimes quite harrowing performances by the whole cast, and gripping story-line, make this a film well worth seeing. It didn’t win that Oscar for nothing!