Review – Hold Up!

[Hold Up! is showing in Adelaide on Wednesday, 19th June, 7 p.m. as part of the Spanish Film Festival 2013.]

Hold Up! (¡Atraco!) is an Argentine-Spanish film, directed by Eduard Cortés, about a mock robbery of a jewellery shop for Evita Peron’s jewels. In 1955, Juan Peron has been exiled to Panama. To raise the cash to get him into Spain his handler pawns Evita’s prized jewels, which Franco’s wife spots and falls in love with. Realising that Evita would be livid to see Franco’s wife wearing her jewels, a plan is hatched where two loyal Peronistas, Guillermo Francella and Óscar Jaenada, will steal them before they’re sold. The jeweller will then collect on the insurance money, the Perons will get to Spain, Evita will get her sparkly trinkets back, and everyone will have a collective laugh at Franco along the way.

The two heisters have great chemistry, bouncing off of each other well, but are let down by the plot and supporting cast. They play the weathered old hand who’s seen it all before (Francella) and the bright-eyed newbie (Jaenada) who’s eager to please. There’s a girl – there’s always a girl – played by Amaia Salamanca, who borders on launch-a-thousand-ships-gorgeous but has little to do in the film. A mate once described this sort of character as lettuce; sits on the side, doesn’t do much but looks pretty good.

Hold Up! is a reasonable effort, but tries to bind a heist-film with a soppy romance in an effort to spread the plot a little further. The lead-up and planning is entertaining, but the second half gets bogged down in trying to be A Bit Serious About It All. Ultimately, Hold Up! is too light-hearted to be as cutting as it would like to be at the end, and too superficial to be a snap-shot of Franco’s Spain. Settling to be merely A Good Film, you’d watch it once and not feel completely short-changed, but that’s as far as the praise stretches.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=j0GodPlkW20&noredirect=1$w=400]