The best political thriller since "Z", the difference being that while "Z" was banned in Greece, (despite the fact that Greece itself wasn't mentioned as the country in question), Santiago Mitre's extraordinary film "Argentina, 1985" wasn't just filmed in Argentina but is also Argentina's entry for this year's Oscars.
It's a great film but there is nothing ostentatious about it unless you consider Ricardo Darin's closing arguments as the prosecutor tasked with bringing the Junta to justice, ostentatious. Like "Z" this is a film about one prosecutor standing up to his superiors so as not to make the required trial a show-trial that will lead to the defendent's acquittal. In his determination he wasn't entirely alone having recruited a team of young students and workers to help him as well as a 'deputy prosceutor' probably planted in his team because he came from a military family, (PeterLanzani, superb), a strategy that backfired on the powers-that-be since this young lawyer was very much on the prosecutor's side.
What really distinguishes this film, apart from the significance of the subject matter, is that Mitre never tries to blind us with technical flourishes. This is an old-fashioned courtroom picture that holds us in its vice-like grip simply from what is presented as evidence on the screen. It would be a worthy Oscar-winner in any year.
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