Cinema: All Eyes On ‘An Eye For An Eye’

There’s as many sayings about revenge as there are ways to get revenge. “Revenge is a dish best served cold”, “nothing tastes as sweet as revenge”, and of course, “an eye for an eye”. Although the latter has its roots in the Code of Hammurabi – or Biblical scripture depending on your source – it’s a phrase that has been adopted into colloquial language. Now, it’s the English translation of a Spanish film. An Eye For An Eye, Quien A Hierro Mata (Paco Plaza 2019) in Spanish, is a film all about vengeance and taking justice into your own hands. Interestingly, it’s a film that, depending on your perception, either has no protagonists or includes the murderers as just in their proceedings. While released on Netflix, An Eye For An Eye is a transnational and transcultural production, receiving funds and support from corporations like CANAL+ amongst others.

The film opens with a tense and fatal situation juxtaposed against an innocuous one. It’s a motif that reappears several times throughout the film. Kike (Enric Auquer) is the hot headed and temperamental younger son of a notorious drug lord, Antonio Padìn (Xan Xejudo). While Kike terrorizes a man, his older brother, Toño, calmly escorts their aging father out of a clinic. Antonio is in the winter years of his life and, despite his sons’ adamancy that he remain at home, Antonio desires to spend the rest of his life in a care facility. Enter in Mario (Luis Tosar), a beloved caretaker at the elderly home, well-known amidst his peers for his patient ways and his pregnant wife, Julia (Marìa Vàzquez). What may seem at first like a serendipitous situation for Antonio is quickly revealed to be anything but. Mario has a past connection to the Padìns, one that he intends to “repay”. To him, Antonio may as well be a lamb gifted to slaughter. Mario’s intentions lay hidden, but Toño and Kike have their suspicions about him, although for the wrong reasons. However, they can’t spend their full attention on their estranged father since they’re facing their own troubles. After a failed drug deal with the Chinese and the Colombians, someone needs to be held responsible, and the Colombians have decided that “someone” is Kike.

An Eye For An Eye is slower than most American thrillers. Even with “the big reveal” in the midpoint of the film, the action doesn’t quite pick up until the final thirty-five minutes. But when it picks up, things really get heated. Five deaths occur all in the last thirty minutes. It’s akin to the final sprint to the finish line at the end of a marathon. It’s not that the film is boring prior to this point, but it’s a slow build up. What makes the ending so suspenseful is the tension caused by the two plot points finally connecting. Everyone is out for revenge, but only one person holds all the cards. One person who, as it so stands, is paradoxically the victim and the perpetrator.

Alfred Hitchcock, infamous director and a master of suspense, had a tactic he used to explain how to illicit emotional response from the audience, namely that of surprise or suspense.  For suspense, the key was to have the audience know more than the characters. An Eye For An Eye definitely adheres to this method. Aside from suspense, sympathy is aroused by the most unexpected of characters. Characters who are introduced as murderers or ambitious thieves become pitiful by the end of the film. From all ends, An Eye For An Eye values fraternal love over paternal. It’s the driving force behind most of the movie. One that oddly connects two of the main characters even with their vastly differing agendas.

Sound, both diegetic and nondiegetic, also helps raise the tension. Heartbeats or sounds mimicking them feature multiple times during moments of high risk or high emotion They either illicit compassion, such as Mario hearing his unborn son’s heartbeat, or anxiety, as is the case during the failed drug trade. Eventually, the heartbeats are replaced by drums. These drums likewise either lull the audience into a sense of false comfort which is quickly ruptured upon their absence, or increases suspense with their steady repetition. They are particularly present during Mario’s flashback scenes in which the drums are accompanied by blurry and disorienting visions of Mario’s past, akin to the opening scene in Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai 1994).

For a film with the word “eye” appearing twice in the title, there are a lot of close-up shots on hands. This can be played for laughs, like the pseudo-sexual intimacy between Mario and Julia during their antenatal class. On the other hand (no pun intended), it can once again add to the suspense. In another scene, Antonio desperately tries to reach for help after being informed of a great betrayal, but it’s futile. His efforts are stopped by with a close-up of a larger and stronger hand enveloping his own. Aside from hands, there are a few moments that toe the line of grotesque. Kike is forced face first into a rather well-used toilet and the birth scene of Mario and Julia’s son is more graphic than anticipated. It’s nothing in comparison to films series like The Human Centipede or Saw, just the lightest bit of barely-there gore.

This is a film that catalogues the deterioration of one family as another grows. It’s a teetering balance between sacrifice for love and sacrilege for selfish pursuit. In most cases, the two opposing desires overlap. An Eye For An Eye is an emotional film, but it takes time to steep. It’s a film for thought. An Eye For An Eye is worth keeping an eye on.