Outlaws

"Nacho" (Marcos Ruíz) ought to have listened to his mother when she warned him about getting involved with some riff-raff when he took on a job helping out at the local gaming arcade, but he was too smitten with the manipulative "Tere" (Begoña Vargas) to see reason. Before he knows it, she has introduced him to her petty thieving pal "Zarco" (a slightly understated but solid effort from Chechu Salgado) and they are planning an hit on the kindly old man (Pep Cruz) who gave him his job in the first place. At this point he still has some semblance of self-control and exhorts his new pals not to hurt the old gent, but that self-control soon gives way to his own lusts for money and for a "Tere" who knows exactly which buttons to press. Now he is immersed in their criminal activities, what can "Nacho" do but become even more involved with ever more serious crimes? Now this doesn't exactly hare out of the starting blocks, indeed after the opening few minutes of explanatory family dysfunction I began to lose interest, but once the scene is set and both Ruíz and Vargas start to work together, the story takes on a much more enjoyably menacing and quickly-paced character. The ingredients themselves - drugs, booze, sex, violence and disadvantage are all fairly standard, but this takes takes us on the trip from the perspective of a young man who was not from the wrong side of the tracks, nor was he cruelly treated or neglected by his parents. His entrance into their world of crime was entirely (and hormonally) self-induced, and what's more we gradually begin to see signs that his behaviour and attitudes are wearing off on both "Tere" and "Zarco" as we build to a denouement that might not have looked out of place in "Smokey and the Bandit" (1977).