‘A Loose End’ review: Daniel Hendler’s cop-on-the-run comedy is a deadpan delight

Director/scr: Daniel Hendler. Uruguay/Argentina/Spain. 2025. 95mins

Uruguayan actor Daniel Hendler’s third movie as director is a Spanish-language cop-on-the-run comedy that ropes in Western, thriller and rom-com parts. It’s not at all times simple to maintain viewers curiosity in a whimsical street film like this however, regardless of some longueurs, A Unfastened Finish largely succeeds, partly due to an empathetic central efficiency by Sergio Prina as Santiago, a penniless fugitive out of the country who begins to understand that the expertise might be surprisingly liberating, an opportunity to start out over.

There’s common pleasure available within the movie’s ingenious imaginative and prescient of a fugitive

As an actor, Hendler is probably finest identified for his lengthy working relationship with Argentinian director Daniel Burman, and there’s something of the mild, typically absurdist humour of the pair’s best-known collaboration, Misplaced Embrace (which earned Hendler a Finest Actor award on the 2004 Berlinale) in A Unfastened Finish. The movie, which final yr received San Sebastian’s WIP Latam Trade Award whereas nonetheless in growth, premiered within the new Highlight part at Venice and will nicely attraction itself into just a few arthouse berths even exterior of its main market in its three co-production territories: Uruguay, Argentina and Spain.

For a superb whereas, the movie retains viewers guessing about who Prina’s policeman character Santiago is, and why he’s on the run. One of many strategies deployed by Hendler’s fantastic, lean script is to swap across the sequential blocks of his journey in a manner that provides up solely regularly. One other is to make this flight one thing of a meander, with out ever fairly forfeiting the fun of the chase.

It’s clear early on that the mild-mannered Argentinian corporal is being pursued by two bad-apple colleagues who he is aware of an excessive amount of about: for them, he’s actually a unfastened finish in want of tying up. However when Santiago enters an obligation free store on the border with Uruguay, looking for a manner throughout the frontier that doesn’t require him to indicate ID, this in-between house turns into the setting for a tenderly flirtatious encounter with Pilar Gamboa’s store assistant.

As soon as over the border, Santiago dallies at a cheese truck run by a lugubrious guitar-strumming character performed by real-life Uruguayan musician Alberto Wolf (aka Mandrake Wolf). It’s not apparent why Santiago is aware of a lot about cheese – the movie is refreshingly devoid of backstory – however he clearly does. Later, his curds-and-whey experience will assist him speak his manner into employment at a cheese manufacturing facility.  

Shot cleanly, with few digicam actions, to play up the deadpan tone, A Unfastened Finish is scored by spare, jagged bursts of electrical guitar with the reverb turned up excessive. There’s loads of thematic reverb too: discussions about astrology and the celebs which are peppered all through; the best way Santiago very regularly divests himself of his police uniform by swapping single items of it with folks he meets alongside the best way; even within the names of two of the locations Santiago travels to on his Uruguayan odyssey – Mercedes (‘mercy’) and Dolores (‘sorrows’).

Hendler’s winsome, touching comedy isn’t above the occasional native joke, together with one centring on the natural drink often called mate that may little doubt resonate extra with Latin American audiences. However there’s common pleasure available within the movie’s ingenious imaginative and prescient of a fugitive who turns the harmful frontier into a spot during which to unburden, change and develop.