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- Taking crime for a one-way ride: The dirty cops of “Unit 7.”
BY BONNIE ROSENSTOCK | Ah, the southern Spanish city of Seville. This beautiful and captivating land of magnificent Moorish monuments is also the soul-searing heartland of flamenco cante and baile, and home to nightlife that doesn’t get going until way after midnight. You will find none of this in “Unit 7.”
Several years before and up to the opening of the 1992 Seville World Expo, which is to give the city prestige and an important economic boost, the four cops in the autonomous unit have been given free rein — unofficially and by any means necessary, it seems — to rid the city of rampant drug trafficking (Barcelona hosted the Olympics that year).
The two main characters are the apt-named Angel, the baby-faced rookie who aspires to make detective but can’t pass the grueling physical because of his diabetes — and Rafael, a world-weary cop with a penchant for brutal, but successful, tactics in his takedowns.
During the course of the years, the two will reverse roles, as Angel transforms into a loose cannon and Rafael searches for a modicum of peace in his cheerless life.
The fast-paced, taut police drama — not your formulaic Hollywood cop-buddy flick — takes us on a vertiginous ride through the underbelly of Seville. Except for the thrilling rooftop chases, where the centuries-old domes, cupolas and pediments are unavoidable in the frames, this earthy shoot-’em-up (with a low body count) travels through the broken alleyways and trash-strewn plazas and streets with crumbling building facades.
Even the mighty Guadalquivir, which runs through the city, is used for nefarious purposes — the junkies and small-time dealers are made to strip and jump into the river until they agree to change their wanton ways or become snitches. “Each junkie is a snitch,” says one of the cops…but sometimes, even junkies strike back.
Co-writer and director Alberto Rodriguez knows how to provide ambience and mold offbeat anti-heroes — the cops, and yes, the sympathetic madam, who is enmeshed in their downward spiral into corruption. Seville has always been a city of shadows. This movie brings them into the light.
Feature Narrative
Directed by Alberto Rodriguez
Screenplay by Rafael Cobos & Alberto Rodriguez
In Spanish with English subtitles
Runtime: 92 Minutes
