4/5 Grim and intense
  by W. Oliver (Alabama)
This stark and disturbing film is based on Argentinian soccer player Claudio Tamburrini's account of his kidnapping and torture by that countries military regime in the late 70s. Falsely accused of being a terrorist, Tamburrini is imprisoned along with other young men in a decaying villa where they are routinely tortured, starved and humiliated in an attempt to get confessions from them. After 120 days, Taburrini and three others, knowing that their days are numbered, make a brave escape in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm.

The film is good at depicting an event that will leave the viewer outraged and horrified at the cruelty of man but the film could have perhaps been better with richer character development. Rodrigo de la Serna (from "The Motorcyle Diaries") is excellent as Taburrini and his fellow co-stars are equally as strong but the script does not provide the viewer with a grasp of who they really are. What the film does attain is tension which is unrelenting. Although the depiction of torture is thankfully mild, the actors terrified expressions and emaciated bodies tell the viewer all they need to know.

I'm perplexed as to why this film is being marketed toward the gay audience. There are no gay subplots or relationships. The men are striped naked and make their escape that way - is this the reason? Do they think gay people are that shallow?



4/5 An Inside View of Political Detainees
  by Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States)
One of the aspects of this excellent film from Argentina is the disturbing fact that it is based on actual events. Director Israel Adrián Caetano (with Esteban Student and Julian Loyola) created the screenplay from the main character's memoir - 'Pase libre' by Claudio Tamburrini - and in doing so bring a sense of immediacy and unfiltered truth to this tale of the 1977 military dictatorship in Argentina during the time of the 'Desaparecidos' or terminal evacuation/elimination of dissidents to the regime.

CHRONICLE OF AN ESCAPE (Crónica de una fuga) relates the capture of soccer goalie Claudio Tamburrini (Rodrigo de la Serna, remembered for his magnetic portrayal of Alberto in 'The Motorcycle Diaries') during a soccer game in 1977 when he was abducted, blindfolded, and taken to a house of detention as a suspected revolutionary. Claudio is beaten, interrogated, starved, and forced to live nude, blindfolded and in handcuffs chained to his palette along with other detainees - Guillermo Fernández (Nazareno Casero), El Gallego (Lautaro Delgado), El Vasco (Matías Marmorato) and El Tano (Martín Urruty). Each of the detainees is repeatedly tortured and deprived of the 'necessities' of living until after four months the group decides to escape. The tension of their ingenious escape provides the film with a tense and riveting closure, and at the end of the film the destinies of each of the detainees is revealed.

Though the world knows some of the details of the military junta in Argentina that lasted from 1976 to 1985, observing the calamity in the form of real individuals who suffered pleads the case for understanding the atrocities better than simply reading media accounts. The manner in which Caetano directs his superb cast is enhanced by the extraordinary cinematography of Julián Apezteguía and the moody and creatively subtle musical score by Iván Wyszogrod. The cast is uniformly excellent: though the men who play the evil torturers have not been named in this review they are all very strong actors. This is a tough movie to watch and the audience should be aware that the prisoners appear in the nude throughout the film (if that is a problem for some viewers). In Spanish with English subtitles. Very strongly recommended, especially in this time when the concept of 'detainees' is so very much in the public eye once again! Grady Harp, August 08

5/5 over to the dark side
  by PJR (Minneapolis, Minnesota United States)
Psychological and physical torture are by no means new in serious films (not to mention of course horror exploitation films). But many efforts to put political abuse on film have had to do with Nazis and I think we need to keep in mind that other civilized countries like Argentina have gone over to the dark side in the last century or so. Unleash the dogs of war and get some "professional" thugs to try to get information out of people and you get thug-like mistreatment of people that may or may not reveal true facts, and that can even sweep in quite innocent people.

I am an American and this is why I found the film interesting. We are thinking a lot in 2009 about our own government in recent years locking up and whisking off presumed bad guys and abusing them in rather primal ways. It is good to contemplate the realities of political torture, though of course it is not easy to compare Argentine politics directly with the contemporary situation that concerns us. Do I need to say this twice? It is only the chaos of crude methods of supposedly extracting information that hints at comparison.

It was a well-made film about a true story from a very ugly chapter in Argentine history when a military dictatorship took over. I have seen films about the era of the "disappearances" the desaparacidos and The Official Story (La historia oficial) (1985)is one that I thought was outstanding. This one for example helped me as an American to better understand how not only brutal but really sick those days were and had a plot that drew you in.

Chronicle of an Escape is mostly about torture and escape and does not flesh out very well the historical context for the personal torments. But if you know at least a bit of the history it can help flesh out and bring to life aspects of the human dimensions of what people in Argentina went through. I know enough of the history to have found it engrossing, but I think it would have been more engrossing to Argentinians.

So I would say it was a good film in all technical respects and a good effort to document an important personal story for modern history.So with reservations I give it 5 stars.

Is this a keeper? I have not made up my mind. The "Making of An Escape" special feature was annoying -- it seemed like self indulgent fluff and the crew was having altogether too good a time for such a serious topic and had too little to say about the era or about film-making.

The "Deleted Sequences" were quite interesting, however, and you could imagine how the film could have been edited to have a rather different texture.

The trip to Stockholm was worth watching but was not what it could have been. It did put real faces on some of the characters in the film after they had grown older. The special features all had English subtitles and so that was good for me.

I really wish that there had been a director's or producers commentary to help make more clear for non-Argentinians some of the subtle interpersonal relationships. Then I would watch it again. As it is I think I will sit on it awhile and see if I am inspired to go back and get into some of the details that were hard to be sure of. For me they were not really important. Like did his sister betray the soccer star to protect her boyfriend? If the answer is there, it would not be important to me because in general Argentinians were crippled by fear and this would only have been another disgusting example.

5/5 Is It Argentina or Iraq?
  by Kenneth A. Nelson (Pensacola, FL)
This film has hit so many sore spots that I am questioning the morality of any similar situation.

Is it okay for this demonic treatment to be practiced for any reason, under any circumstances, to whomever is thought guilty of any crime or show of power? This well made film has managed to strike too close to my heart for me not to react with fear, disbelief and maudlin curiosity.

Everything was done perfectly. The character development was extensive and finished characters were so real (to me) that I was truely afraid of them. I cringed quite frequently due to the Actors challenging roles coming across as absolutely real-life people. The story, coming from real life was not over-played and not softened to appease the tastes of the majority of viewers.

This was not made to be classisfied as a "Horror" Movie, but in fact, in this case, life and the people involved as the sadistic torturers and murderers was sadly all HORRORS!!!

WOW! What a film!