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La Senal
The Signal is a 2007 Argentine film written by Eduardo Mignogna, who was set to direct as well, but due to his untimely demise a year before production, his friend and frequent collaborator, Ricardo Darin, took direction along Martin Hodara, who was called in to aid Darin in his directorial debut. Darin also starred in the lead role, along with Diego Peretti, Julieta Diaz and Andrea Pietra.
The film is dedicated to Eduardo Mignogna.
Synopsis
The film starts in medias res, with Corvalan hiding in a safehouse and preparing himself for a gunfight. The film then takes a step back to the start, in the form of a flashback.
The year is 1952: Eva Peron has retired from public figure due to poor health, and her final days are being broadcasted on the radio. Corvalan, alias "El Pibe" and Santana (Diego Peretti) are two amateur private detectives living off oddjobs and gambling. Corvalan is also in a decaying relationship with Perla (Andrea Pietra). After one unlucky day at the tracks, Corvalan meets a mysterious woman, Gloria (Julieta Diaz), at a cafe. She leaves her number and leaves. Corvalan tries to contact her at first, but unsuccessfully so until he is reached by Gloria herself, and presented with an assignment: stalk a man all day, Nicolas Pertureta. Although Pertureta proves difficult to follow, Corvalan manages to garner information of Pertureta contacting a number of shady people.
As the plot unfolds and Corvalan recruits his cautious partner, Santana, into the assignment - while keeping in line regular tasks. Perla is caught cheating on Corvalan, Pertureta is found strangled with barbed wire, and it is revealed that Gloria is the wife of a major mafia boss, "El Noruego" (The Norwegian), who is being haunted by the surviving member of a family he once massacred years ago in Sicily: the last of the Capuano family, Dino Capuano. Because El Noruego suspects a snitch, and Gloria fears for her safety, she tells Corvalan at the movies that she hired him to give her, and indirectly, her husband, proof that the snitch is Pertureta.
Santana wants no business with the feud between El Noruego and Dino Capuano, but Corvalan, moved by Gloria's story, decides to help her, and together go into hiding at a safehouse. It is here that the movie catches up with the start, and Corvalan engages in a gunfight with El Noruego's henchmen. He and Gloria escape after killing one of them, and as Corvalan runs out of bullets, Santana arrives and rescues them.
After getting word that El Noruego and his gang have been gunned down by Capuano, Gloria manages to convince Corvalan to disappear with her. To do so, Corvalan must go to El Noruego's place and open the safe that holds savings worth a lifetime. In the movie's climax, Corvalan manages to open the safe, but is interrupted by his own father, who gun-pointing him demands the money. Corvalan reads the "Remington" seal in the safe-box and remembers that days ago his father told him he had a safe-box with a five-digit combination, which he was planning to rob. Just as he is about to kill him, he is shot in the back by Gloria as he, in time, shoots Corvalan. Gloria leaves Corvalan to die, and walks away with the money.
In the last scene, Santana painfully identifies Corvalan's body at the morgue. He mutters "So long, my friend" (in English) and leaves.
Trivia
The movie shares a similar plot with another Argentine movie, La fuga, 2001, directed and also written by Eduardo Mignogna. In the film, the life of seven escaped convicts is told through flashbacks and interconnecting stories. One of these convicts, played by Ricardo Darin, is nicknamed "El Pibe" like in La Senal, and his fate plays similarly in both movies: a man is tricked by the woman he loves into risking his life for money, after which he is shot, and the shooter in turn is shot by the woman. The shooter dies instantly, and the woman walks away with the money, leaving Darin's character to bleed to death. More similarities include actor Vando Villamil's presence in both movies, as well as the fact that both films are "period movies".
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article La Senal
