Wild Horses

José is an old man who walks into a finance house and pulls a gun. What he wants is not a robbery: he wants back money that was his and that the company took years ago. Pedro, a young employee, is taken hostage. The two go outside, the event reaches television, and public opinion takes the old man's side. They run for Patagonia. Marcelo Piñeyro directs. Héctor Alterio plays José and Leonardo Sbaraglia plays Pedro. The background is Argentina in the nineties: privatisation, the growth of the financial sector and what pensioners lost. The narrative takes it on directly and builds the event as a claim of right rather than a crime. The shape is a road film and deliberately close to a western; the Patagonian landscape, the flight and the police behind them come from that form. Leonardo Sbaraglia became known through this film and the part was taken as a sign of a generational change in Argentine cinema. It was a large commercial success in Argentina and among the most watched domestic films of its period. Its weaknesses are the romantic line and several coincidences; the narrative settles into genre in the second half. The use of music and songs belongs to the popular cinema of the time and is overemphatic from here. Who it is for: viewers who like Latin American road films and popular work carrying social anger. Who it is not for: the plot is conventional, the ending is predictable, and the political criticism stays on the surface.