Torrente: The Dumb Arm of the Law

Torrente, a suspended policeman in Madrid, is a drunk, a racist, a liar and completely incompetent. He convinces himself a drug operation is running behind a Chinese restaurant and starts a supposed investigation with a few people he gathers from the neighbourhood. The film is not interested in crime. It is interested in how repellent its character is: it makes no attempt to make Torrente likeable, and instead chooses to leave the audience in the room with him and make them uncomfortable. The humour is deliberately coarse and has no defence. The form is cheap and fast: real Madrid streets, dark bars, short scenes and references to Spanish popular cinema of the eighties. Santiago Segura wrote, directed and played the lead. The film was an unexpected box-office explosion in Spain, turned into a series running many years, and made Segura one of the country's biggest ticket sellers. Javier Cámara and Neus Asensi are also in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like black humour and Spanish popular comedy. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot sit through racist and sexist jokes. The film uses them behind a shield of irony, but what stays onscreen is still the jokes themselves.