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21 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :-
A must see!!!!, 20 March 2007
9/10
Author: seroton133 from Valencia, Spain

One of the most incredible movies of this year!! Superb!! A half way between a Scorsese made in Spain and Paul Thomas Anderson with a little taste of Billy Wilder and even Tony Scott. You can rarely see a so talented young director. It has a great script, which explains the lies of the banks and the financial system. But it's not boring at all, as if a young Orson Welles decided to guide the daring formal structure. The best editing I've ever seen in Spain, I can tell you, magic, genius. And Leonardo Sbaraglia does his best performance until now, two thumbs up for him. Difficult to believe you're seeing this in Spain. It's an spectacle!! Intelligent, funny, terrible, fast, crazy, intelligent again... Much more than a movie!! It may not be perfect, but it certainly is a great great film!!

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15 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
Amazing movie, 31 March 2007
9/10
Author: Alexia Quetglas from Malaga, Spain

I've seen this film in the Spanish Cinema Malaga Festival, and I consider it excellent. The audience also finded it moving and different, and all of us clapped spontaneously at the end of it, the whole theater decided to stand up as if we were one only person. "Concursante" also has a great performance by Leonardo Sbaraglia, an excellent actor from Argentina, his acting is spectacular, brilliant, and the same for the rest of the cast, very inspired and very well directed. It won the Critics Award (and Best Cinematography), but it deserved many more, that was the general feeling in Málaga. Excellent movie that may also work abroad, because of its international look and interesting theme (the truth of the Financial System). Ten points for "Concursante", Leonardo Sbaraglia and its young and promising director, Rodrigo Cortés.

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5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Among the best movies in cinema history., 5 January 2008
Author: gardel46 from usa

And that's because it subtly educates the viewer on the abject fraud of the Ponzi financial and monetary system, which many imo still do not understand. _Money as Debt_ and _The Moneymasters_ are two other (non-fiction) titles worth viewing for further background.

This movie's timing could not have been better, given the global financial system meltdown currently underway, as a result of yet another Ponzi scam, to wit, the astronomical heap of worthless over-the-counter derivatives piled on top of garbage debt-backed paper of all sorts (securitized mortgage loans, auto loans, credit card debt, etc.).

I think the script wastes a bit of time at the beginning with details about the main character that aren't really relevant to the story, and over the course of the last 10-15 minutes when building up toward a denouement which I would've preferred had been different. Nevertheless, I'd give it a 100 points if I could, for the way it masterfully weaves a subject that most people don't want hear about because it bores them, into an extremely entertaining fictional story brimming with a plethora of unique, charismatic and hilarious characters. Even the most despicable character radiates uproarious charm.

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7 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Extraordinary bomb of time, 5 April 2007
8/10
Author: Leticia Alberdi from Majadahonda, Spain

A normal guy ruins his life because a stroke of good luck. Will the director die for the same reason? I don't think so, for he shows much more than simple luck on the guiding of this extraordinary film about the truth and the appearance of truth, abut the luck and the evil of the banks, about the fast and the cinema itself. Rodrigo Cortes directs his first film with master hand, it's difficult to believe this is his first feature. I haven't seen his short films, but I'll try to, since the joy and good time this movie has given to me. Impactant editing, masterful script, extraordinary music, amazing directing, unbelievable acting (and can an actor be more handsome??)... At first I thought this film was going to be a pedant bluff, but at the minute 20 I couldn't stop watching at the screen, almost hypnotized. I'll never trust a bank again!!

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
The bank always wins, or the modern layman's crisis meets Wilder and Bergman, 27 August 2008
Author: Agnelin

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

"Concursante" is the most brilliant, thought-provoking and intelligent movie I've seen this year, and I recommend it to any movie-watcher who has an open mind to new story-telling ways in cinema and to an out of the ordinary and ferociously critical content. It is basically an intellectual bomb aimed at the modern economy system based on "fictitious money" and on bank credits, mortgages and loans that ends up devouring the individual, his properties, his dignity and, eventually, his life.

The movie follows Martín Circo (not by chance, it means "circus" in Spanish, since that is exactly what we're about to watch), an Economy teacher who doesn't sidestep the traditional scholarship when he lectures his students: according to him, we live in "the best world possible". One day, he wins material goods worth 6 million euros on a television contest -he and his girlfriend are now filthy rich. But Circo is about to find out that being a millionaire is very expensive, and that he has now become a victim of the bank system. The movie starts a la "Sunset Blvd.", with Circo witnessing his own death scene (no spoilers therefore), and telling us his story of rise and fall. But, even though we know -or we think we know- how the story goes, there is much more to it than the story of an ordinary man versus the bank. In the wake of his gradual fall, he (and the viewers) will meet several picturesque characters, with the outlandish and rebellious economy expert Edmundo Figueroa clearly standing out and forming a memorable anti-heroic pair with Circo.

There are many reasons why it is advisable to watch "Concursante". It will tell you, or remind you of a few uncomfortable truths that we live with every day, but which we accept for the sake of being able to buy the newest cell phone model -and yet it will do so in a non-lecturing way. It is brimming with cynicism, irony, and some degree of accepted fatalism as to the world we live in -this could as well have been a rampant tragedy, but the director has wisely chosen to make it a surreal comedy of sorts, despite its heavy critical content.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Great surprise!!, 21 November 2007
9/10
Author: Gabriel García from Cuenca

Excellent film! I couldn't see it on theaters (my town is not exactly a cultural prodigy), so I've discovered it hiring a DVD, feeling curiosity because of the extraordinary critics of the cover. I didn't even know this film existed! I still don't believe this movie is Spanish, it's difficult to believe that we have a director who can shoot this way. I also find the film brave, smart and even didactic in the best sense of the word, I've learned things that almost make my head explode. I'm still impressed for this lesson of real cinema, editing and performances. The structure and construction of this intelligent script deserves 10 points (my English does not deserve more that 4).

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5 out of 28 people found the following comment useful :-
weird film, 19 March 2007
3/10
Author: daniel Carbajo López from Barcelona, Spain

Martin is an Economy teacher, one day, he win the biggest prize given on TV: 3 million € in objects; that is to say, a new luxurious mansion, 5 cars, a yacht, a plane... But he has not the money to keep everything. He should sell something, but the greed of his wife and the thirst of money of his lawyer will make them to ask the bank for money to keep everything, which will ruin his life, as the bank is not going to put things easy... The movie, filmed in a very curious way, with very short shots, like a music video, it quite daring, and it criticize our economy system with energy. Anyway, most of the thing that happen are a little too much exaggerated and it results very unreliable. Should the main character had been a few more thoughtful, would he arrived to a better way to act, but, well, then there would not have been a movie. At most moments it is like a economics class rather than a movie, the result is quite disappointing and only the talent of Sbaraglia as the main character gives a ray of light to quality in the film. The filming is daring, but it is clear that it is from a novice. It wants to tell so many things that is not able to explain anything correctly. There better movies, maybe on next, the director makes a better job. He seems to have the talent, not the experience.

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