I caught this film on IFC in Theaters on cable.

True story of what happened in Argentina in 1977 when a goalie on a soccer team was kidnapped by the secret police and thrown into a secret prison and tortured for information he didn't have.

Good story of imprisonment and escape by several young men being held and tortured by the military government. The early portion of the film is a terrifying portrait of a government out of control and how in the process it leaves everyone feeling frightened (I will refrain from making Bush comparisons). Once in the prison, actually a secluded old house, we watch as the men there are repeatedly tortured for information concerning a terrorist attack. Its clear from many conversations that the captors want names even though as one prisoner says he has no names to give them. Its a damning portrait of the uselessness of torture, since its clear you may just get a confession to make the pain stop. Unfortunately there is a sameness to it all that grows tiresome, it wears away the tension from the situation. I'm sure the tension never went away from the men being held but for me sitting in my seat watching I just wanted them to get on with it.

The final portion of the film is the actual escape. Its a good piece of film making however there isn't as much fear as there should be and thats to do with the title of the film (it tells us what happens), the opening text (which tells us how we know the story) and in my case the marketing and reviews, which gave away way too much information.(and in all fairness I've probably said too much myself). I wish I didn't know what I had been told about and by the film so that the final portion of the film would have played so much tenser.

6 out of 10 (though add a few more if you manage not to know anything about the actual events)

That's the best movie about Argentina dictatorship that I have seen since GARAGE OLIMPO, back in 2001. There was COMPANEROS of course, but I prefered this one. Any movie buff could thnk about L'AVEU, the Costa Gavras masterpiece. The Argentinian government at this time hired not even militaries but hoodlums to execute the dirty work, as French De Gaulle's henchmen did during Algerian war, against OAS. But this bunch of goons were wiped out by former elite paratroopers of the OAS, in Algiers, before OAS was finally dismantled. In Argentina, only war d defeat in Falklands made this dictatorship eventually collapse. Back to tis feature, it is an awesome and painful piece of work, believe me, and also a powerful character study, depressing, gloomy. But it deserves to be seen to fully understand things that were not always fully explained. Not for all audiences.

Yes, this time we can be sure. This movie will bring home the first award since "la historia Oficial". But the great thing about this movie is that it does not need any award to prove how great it is. When you have some great performances, specially from the best south-American actor of his generation, Rodrigo de la Serna (Diarios de Motocicleta), and a director who has achieved his most mature work, and all of this to tell a story so sad, deep, breathtaking and energetic, you can't go wrong. I was lucky enough as to see this film on a preview, so this is the first vote it receives at the IMDb. But believe me, this movie has future of top 250. Not that it needs it, anyway. Finally, if you are from Argentina, and you think that we have had enough with this type of stories, think of all the missing tales similar to this one, that we'll never know of. They are at least 30.000. So we need to continue filming and writing about the seventies, until one day we'll be able to say. "This won't happen again"