REVIEW: ‘The Marked Woman’ — twisty Spanish thriller that leans too hard on genre cliches
DUBAI: There’s definite potential in this Spanish crime thriller. But there’s also a lot that will remind you of numerous other films and shows of this genre. Ultimately, there’s too much of the latter for that potential to shine through.
The basics: A woman (played by Ana Rujas) is discovered in a shipping container in Barcelona port. She has been tortured. She doesn’t remember who she is or how she got there (cross that off your crime-trope bingo card). The two detectives — Anna Ripoll (Candela Pena) and Quique Zarate (Pol Lopez) — tasked with keeping her alive have to work out the answers.
The action moves briskly. The mystery woman, we soon discover, is the sister of an ex-informer for Zarate. An informer who disappeared after making corruption claims against him that mean he’s now being investigated by internal affairs. Reason enough for him to bear a grudge, you’d think?
As for Ripoll — she’s another trope: a detective who’s suffered personal trauma and loss and has returned to work earlier than most of her colleagues (including her boss) think is wise, but believes that the job is the only thing that will get her through.
