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INTACTO Send This Review to a Friend
Can you steal someone else's luck? You wouldn't want to steal mine; I've had to endure "Intacto." Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's murky Spanish film not only involves stealing luck but sets up stakes of life and death if one puts the acquisition to the ultimate test.
The kingpin of luck is Sam, played by Max von Sydow, whose major good fortune was surviving the Holocaust, even though he lost everything else. Now he's holed up as the mysterious, omnipotent head of a casino, and the ultimate challenge is for someone to come and test luck with him. It involves playing Russian roulette. Lose and you die. Sam is always the winner. Will that hold?
Federico (Eusebio Poncela) has a special power. He can touch someone and walk away with the person's luck. He's been Sam's associate but there's an ominous split. A thief named Tomas (Leonardo Sbaraglia) survived a plane crash--the only survivor. There has to be a woman, of course, and she's Sara (Monica Lopez), a cop whose family was killed in a car accident that she survived. Sara is on a mission of her own.
How all of this intricately plays out in the screenplay that the director wrote with Andres M. Koppel is not only convoluted but progressively more boring. By the time of the inevitable big face-off, patience has been severely tried. Von Sydow is a great actor and he brings his all to whatever part he plays, but he's sadly wasted in this one. A Lions Gate Films release.
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