Airbag

Juantxo is getting married and his friends take him to a brothel for the stag night. When he wakes in the morning the engagement ring is gone. The ring has disappeared and the wedding is in a few days. The three friends set out to find it. The trail leads into a criminal world; the man who took the ring dies, then someone else turns up, and before long the three are being chased from one end of Spain to the other. Guns, police, gangs and constant misunderstanding. Nobody can control the situation. Juanma Bajo Ulloa directs. Fernando Guillén Cuervo, Karra Elejalde and Alberto San Juan are in the cast, along with the well known chef Karlos Arguiñano. It is a Spanish production, made in 1997. The film did large business in Spain and was among the most watched local productions of its time. The register is black comedy; the violence is exaggerated and realism is not the aim. The director had been known for quiet, heavy dramas; this film is their opposite. The form is a chase; each event sets off the next and there is no point of rest. The narrative refers to the popular culture of nineties Spain. The film was found coarse in some quarters and its humour was argued over. None of the characters acts with a plan; the comedy comes out of that incompetence. Its limit is tone; the jokes belong to their period, the women's parts are weak, and the ending overblown. Who it is for: viewers who like Spanish black comedy and chase films. Who it is not for: it is coarse, loud, and the humour dated.