May God Save Us

Quite a quote, huh?

Somehow this resonates with the movie May God Save Us. Although the title suggests a religious movie worth watching this Christmas, in reality, God is helpless here protecting the elderly woman being raped by a young fella who happened to be from a church-going religious family.

Premiered in 2016, this Spanish movie has a decent 7.1 IMDb rating. Rating may fool you sometimes but for this particular movie, maybe it’s a fair rating. Surrounded by the hunting down of the serial rapist, the movie involves two policemen, one with brain, another with muscle— paired together to do this seemingly impossible job.

The plot is dark and somewhat contains disturbing graphics, especially I don’t find it amusing seeing elderly women naked. Even though they are dramatised for the sake of the movie, to emphasise the investigation; I am not convinced with such detailed scenes at the morgue. There could be other ways to do that. Anyway, now that I have finished watching the movie, I want to forget what I didn’t like about it.

In some places, it’s violent. But not like hardcore action films, with a mild vibe of rising tension between colleagues and the victims and the perpetrator, you will be glued to the screen until the mystery is solved. Talking about the mystery, about the killer, the director has done a marvellous job by keeping the suspense alive till the last moment of the movie. It’s not too nice to see the murderer revealed soon and then follow him around the rest of the movie. However, Korean films are different and they have masterful ways of keeping the suspense as long as the director wants to— no matter whether the crime is revealed in the beginning or not. I guess you can already sense that I am a big fan of Korean crime thriller.

Back to the movie, catching a smart killer isn’t easy as some of the Hollywood films suggest but yes, it has to end sometime, somehow. But when the streets are overcrowded by pilgrims across the globe to meet the Pope, handling the case is something beyond difficult for two policemen. So many visitors, constant pressure from foreign embassies, national reputation in danger— it’s easy to get a mental crackdown when time is ticking.

Besides, the investigators have their own difficulties dealing with the people which makes them no different from the criminal minds. Bad temper, failed social life and deprived sexual life turn them into monsters sometimes. You cannot really control yourself when your beloved sees another man while you are busy doing your job. This might make the viewer sympathetic to one of the police officers and especially what happened afterwards earns him more respect, helping the viewers to overlook his violent attitude toward others.

However, I am not sure whether this is a great time to watch the film given the Christmas vibe in the air, but if you haven’t watched it yet, keeping it shortlisted may be worthwhile.

_^ⓒ