Cue trailer announcer: “They stole his insulin kit! They shot his son and violated his daughter! This time, the revenge comes subtitled!” Chile’s official submission in this year’s Oscar derby is a variation on a Death Wish theme, with enough passive camerawork and artlessly composed excess headroom to give it a clear-cut art-film veneer. Writer-director Alejandro Fernández Almendras knows how to engage depth as a narrative tool, and can even inject suspense where it seemingly doesn’t belong. It’s his unwillingness to interrupt pedantic long takes — too many outlive their usefulness — and inability to breathe fresh life into the regulation interplay between victims and an incredulously blunt police force that keep it firmly rooted in average. Spoiler alert: it’s based on a true story. With Daniel Candia as the passive-until-pushed patriarch and Daniel Antivilo as his middle-aged (!) aggressor. (2014) — Scott Marks
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