Unlike the North American industry and the rest of Europe, it seems that Spanish cinema only follows the trends that work for it at the box office. A few years ago, only horror films were produced, inherited from The Others such as El orfanato , Los ojos de Julia , Rec or While you sleep . Years later, comedy cinema exploded with the highest grossing Spanish work in history, 8 Basque surnames . The television production companies saw in the genre a profitability bet where to place the stars of their grid feeding themselves with their promotion. The abuse of the presence of these productions is still in force, however Netflix has decided to bet on a typology of films, little traveled in the cinema of our borders: Action cinema with Xtremo
Xtremo is the new Netflix action movie that is making its way into the top 10 of the most popular on the streaming platform (1st among movies and 3rd in the general list of the application) . Director Daniel Benmayor signs his third film with the experience that has given him directing other stories of the genre such as his previous work in 2005, Tracers with Taylor Lautner. Perhaps with Xtremo , Benmayor will influence the increase in productions of this type, thanks to the fact that the film has a highly choreographed workmanship and a courageous visual staging. Unfortunately, this tale of kung-fu, shooting and revenge is not only unsurprising, it is also extremely exaggerated and out of tune.
Xtremo is armed with a villain ( Óscar Jaenada ) who has spent a season in Japan and has returned half a yakuza. From what is intuited in the film, before he was more or less good, but his father sent him to the land of the rising sun to learn what honor is. Instead, he returns ambitious and uncontrolled, killing his father ( Juan Diego ) and commissioning Finito ( Sergio Peris-Mencheta ) to also kill the son of the main hit man, Max ( Teo García ). Max will take revenge with another member of the band, played by Andrea Duro . However, the young Leo ( Óscar Casas ), a medium-haired camel will get into the middle of this conflict, while he establishes a father-child relationship of friendship with the protagonist.
A misplaced story that provokes anti-homage
It is good to honor and have influences when creating a story, but for this you have to be very clear about certain contexts. Here, questions such as where and how are fundamental to place with a certain sense a plot that a priori, is not very credible in a city like Barcelona. Not only because of the location (it is clear that crime and gangs exist in Barcelona), but also because of what elements you introduce and how you do it. Xtremo’s philosophy seems to be “the more the merrier” , so much so that the protagonist kills at any time and place of the day because in this film there is no police (literally he does not appear at any time).
The script built on a world too ambitious for the reality it represents, worsens due to how its characters are constructed, both by the lines of dialogue and by a past interpretation of turns. All of them end up dancing under good choreography condemned to irrelevance and light entertainment. In the end, wanting to imitate the martial arts genre already well received in recent action films such as John Wick, Xtremo only manages to be misplaced in form and content, causing anti-homage or rejection by fans of the genre.
