ma-cortes Amid the Sevilla International Exposition , ¨Expo 2000¨ , and the religious festivities of Saint Week , a corpse has appeared in the Maestranza . An aspiring novelist named Simon Cardenas (Eduardo Noriega) pays his invoices by composing crossword puzzles for the Sevilla Gazeta newspaper . Simon shares apartment with a strange young named Sapo (Jordi Molla) . Then , a cryptic recording left on his answering machine asks that he includes a certain word in a future puzzle . Meanwhile , at the Church of Salvacion is spilled gas Sarin , a nervous gas similarly to Tokio underground . Soon Simon is forced into participating in a real-life version of a computer game , a special Rol Game , on the narrow streets of Seville, the stakes being extremely high for the entire city . Later on , another corpse of a priest appears at the Church of the Cautivo . Then the prey Simon/Noriega becomes involved in an intense and increasingly deep chase by means of use of all kinds of methods of communication such as messages , internet and web cams . Simon knows a beautiful journalist (Natalia Verbeke) and both of whom investigate the rare events , as they go to Archive of Indians , get a clue and discover a fantastic enigma . The film contains thrills , violence , nudism with some strong sexuality , mystery in a dark atmosphere , complemented with moving tension and intrigue . These elements provide the setting for this piece of action/suspense movie , giving it its own special quality and ambient . The atmosphere and perverse intrigue enhance as well as the Holy week religious procession take place . The flick caused great polemic in Spain , for the reason the explosions and bombings to spectacular processions that are considered as sacred . Interesting screenplay by the same filmmaker , Mateo Gil , based on the novel by Juan Bonilla . The film is starred by a Spanish all-star-cast as Noriega , Jordi Molla , Natalia Verbeke and Paz Vega . All of them would make subsequently a fine career as European as Hollywood , playing some international movies . Acceptable Eduardo Noriega as a young who becomes drawn into a spiraling tangle of mystery , danger and confusion . Gorgeous Paz Vega who holds a strong Andalucian accent and Natalia Verbeke who has the strong scenes of nudism . Thrilling and suspenseful soundtrack by musician/director Alejandro Amenabar usual collaborator to Mateo Gil and even appears a cameo as a boy in the bar . Colorful cinematography by Javier Salmones who shows splendidly the streets and monuments of Sevilla such as churches , Giralda , bridge of Alamillos by Calatrava , plus , the Expo 92 . The motion picture was well directed by Mateo Gil . Mateo is a notorious screenwriter , he wrote various films for Amenabar as ¨Agora¨ , ¨Mar Adentro¨ , ¨Abre Los Ojos¨ and ¨Tesis¨ . He only has directed ¨Nobody knows anybody¨ or ¨Nadie Conoce Nadie¨ and recently a Western titled ¨Blackthorn¨ . Rating : Acceptable and passable movie for its intrigue , noisy action and twists and turns .

udar55 Holy crap! What a terrible, terrible Spanish thriller! I've had it for about four years and finally started it the other night. I watched an hour or so before heading to bed. I was pretty intrigued by the whole thing. I finished it last night and couldn't believe where I stopped it the night before. Literally, I stopped it the second before the movie went completely downhill.Like I said, I was pretty intrigued and curious as to where this mystery was going but stopped it right when Simon receives the package in the bar. I picked up when he opens up the package to reveal a laser gun and then plays a "menacing" game of laser tag. Whew! Then the big reveal is that the whole thing is a terrorist plot by role playing game nerds. WHEW! You can tell the Spanish industry was definitely behind director Mateo Gil (co-writer of Amenabar's two big previous hits). There is an excellent score and great photography. But this scenario reeks of silliness. How anyone sat through the last 40 minutes with a straight face is beyond me.

dbdumonteil In Europa ,Spain seems to be the one country to have understood the American lessons for the thriller.France failed dismally because its directors tried too hard to sound American .Spain integrates Yankee savoir faire into a personal approach.Take "nadie conoce a nadie":it's Spanish to the core,with its Sevillian pageantry,its Holy week and its processions.This is a wonderful backdrop for a psychological eerie thriller.Eduardo Noriega -who starred in the two Amenabar peaks "abre los oyos" and "tesis" -is definitely the best Spanish actor of his generation.Owing a lot to Fincher's "the game" ,"nadie conoce a nadie" shows some originality,particularly in its first part,when religion seems to be the center of the plot:Bunuelesque accents often emerge -but is there one Spanish director not influenced by the great creator?.The second part dissatisfies a bit ,because some plot twists are irrelevant (the girl's part is not convincing ),but the final is impressive .A splendid cinematography,enhancing Sevilla ,and a tight directing,keeping sex and violence to the minimum, give the movie substance.

Alice Liddel 'Nobody knows anybody' is a conspiracy theory thriller about a Satanist/nut bomber targeting the religious festivities of Seville during Holy Week. He also happens to be the best friend of the film's hero. The plot is set up by the bomber as a computer game, with himself and the hero as players, and Seville as the virtual environment. The very real alleys and streets of the city begin to take on the labyrinthine qualities of those old Pacman-type games. Looked at this way, the scene where the hero and his female sidekick are chased by black-hooded penitents with rayguns may not seem as silly as it plays. From the start, we are aware that the narrative is being constructed as a game - the hero's job is to create crossword puzzles for a popular newspaper; at one point, the crossword grid on his screen becomes the chessboard on which he is later playing against his girlfriend's father. Clues are liberally scattered, as the camera mystifyingly closes in on images that are only later shown to have been significant (e.g. the advert in the bar). The detective/paper chase elements are made part of a game in progress, rather than an investigation after the fact. The film borrows heavily on 'Se7en''s pattern narrative, and anyone with a Catholic education will presumably get the significance of certain events happening on certain days in the run up to EAster.In this reading, the game is on the level of narrative, with the hero fighting against an enemy (in this case, the computer) to win and save the day. But there is a second game, the film itself, which subvert the first. There are another set of of clues which point not to the killer's intentions, but the filmmaker's and his hero's. In the first ten minutes there are references to chess, a writer called Navokov and a cult leader called Sarin. If we remember that the chess-loving Nabokov's 1930s pseudonym was Sirin, we see another game afoot, one where we suspect not the villain, but the hero himself. In a Nabokov novel like 'Pale Fire', an author-figure creates a text which is designed to hide his own motives, provoking a game between writer and reader to uncover the real text. Throughout the film are scenes which are visually distorted (e.g. the image contracting), or which are ambiguously defined dreams and hallucinations that make us suspect the hero's point of view. The opening references to games are all linked to him. In the early sequences, much is made of the character's sexual and creative impotence, so the film could be his attempt to master his life, to be a winner, in a way he can't for real. No sooner has he won the game than his writer's block vanishes; the words he types are the title of the film, suggesting he is the overall author. Further, that title in Spanish reflects on itself negatively, a very Nabokovian involution that suggests a hero, like Kinbote, trapped in his own solecism.This jumble of post-modern literature (Borges, Eco, Pynchon et al are alluded to also), Fincher, 'X-Files', 'Run Lola Run', Chris Marker (the idea of the city and its history as a map and a text; and as a cultural history haunting the present), Bunuellian anti-clericism, and Alex de la Iglesia's 'shock' films result in a film that is just that, a jumble, each clever-clever allusive element cancelling out the last, dissipating interest. The lack of clarity about the game's rules renders it incomprehensible, and eventually wearing. Ironically, in a work of such overdetermined artifice, the film's main interest lies in its documentary quality, as a record of a narrative taking place in a real city with its own events taking place independently. Such an ambiguous blurring of fact and fiction can create a masterpiece like 'Sans Soleil' or 'London', but, ultimately, you need to have a light touch to match your cleverness.