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the audience applauded

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

How can you escape the circle of violence once you've entered it? With more violence? Or let's say "controlled" violence. Possible, but will our main character here be able to do so? You have to watch the movie to see that. It's a decent one, but not a great one. What seemed surprising at first, was the fact Javier Bardem was playing in it too ... might have to do with the fact another Bardem is on the cast list.Whatever the case, the main actor is doing an OK job, portraying his dilemma. The tagged on love story (with added "color", no pun intended, but "story"/character serving) feels a bit off and put on, but it's overall believable (mostly). There is some nice advice to the boxing people, but I guess nothing someone already in the business wouldn't already know.

Set in contemporary Madrid, this is a gritty and hard hitting drama that mixes a story about star-crossed lovers with boxing and neo-Nazis. Javier (exciting, hunky young Spanish star Alex Gonzalez) is a member of a fascist neo-Nazi gang, under the sway of the charismatic Solis (Javier Bardem), and they commit "actions" against migrants and foreigners. Javier is initially poisoned by hatred. But then he joins a local gym and takes up boxing. Under the guidance of the reluctant Carlomonte (Carlos Bardem), a former boxer living with his sense of failure and regrets, Julian's attitude and outlook slowly changes. He falls in love with the beautiful immigrant Alyssa (Judith Diakhate). He rejects the violence and hatred of the neo-Nazis, which brings him into conflict with his brotherhood and, ironically, his own brother Luis (Miguel Angel Silvestre), a real hothead and full of aggression and unrelenting hatred. Bardem reels back his normal intensity for a more subtle performance here as Solis. Scorpion In Love offers a fairly blunt look at contemporary Madrid which is gripped by powerful undercurrents of organised racism and violence. The film is based on the semi-autobiographical novel written by Carlos Bardem, and writer/director Santiago Zannou (The One-Handed Trick, etc) uses boxing as a powerful metaphor throughout the narrative. Zannou often explores themes of alienation, identity, conflict and self-destruction and Bardem's novel is a good fit for his body of work.