El crack

José Luis Garci's 1981 film is regarded as the point where Spanish cinema opened onto noir. Germán Areta is a former policeman now working as a private detective in Madrid and living off small jobs. A dying man asks him to find the daughter who ran away years earlier, and following her trail takes Areta into the unseen side of the city and then to New York. The film is dedicated to Dashiell Hammett and uses the conventions of the genre knowingly, but its real strength is the documentary attention it pays to Madrid, so that the city in transition, its bars and its streets, stays in the film permanently. Alfredo Landa had been known until then for light comedy, and his performance here divided his career in two. Who it's for: viewers who like noir and Spanish cinema of the eighties. Who it's not for: anyone expecting a fast-moving detective story; the film moves slowly.