4x4 (Mariano Cohn)

[Grouchy]

https://pics.filmaffinity.com/4x4-367646500-large.jpg

[Grouchy]

This is a thriller in the sub-genre that I think could be called "escape rooms" like the games, standing next to stuff like Phone Booth or Buried. It's about a thief who tries to hot-wire a car only to find that the paranoid owner has turned it into an elaborate death trap. The film has a few more or less predictable things to say about the huge social gap and the resulting high criminal rates in Argentina, but the actors and the dialogue are good enough that those things are said with grace and finesse. I was particularly impressed by the protagonist Lanzani, he's a soap opera actor and I never knew he could be this good. However, it loses a lot of interest once the plot is forced to leave the limited space of the car, and I find this to be a problem with most movies in this sub-genre.