Bouncer
2018 · 18m · España
Directed by Carlos Robles
Genres: action, crime, thriller
Pat, a former special-forces veterinarian, takes a job as a bouncer at the La Rosa Negra nightclub in a small town, falls for Hannah, and discovers something rotten at work that makes him a target.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A former special-forces vet bouncer discovering a crime conspiracy plays like every other neo-noir small-town thriller—except Robles seems aware of it, which almost makes the predictability worse; the subversion is so buried you wonder if it's even there.
Robles situates himself in the lineage of gritty genre work with considerable formal control—the nightclub setting recalls a tradition of confined-space tension—though the emotional weight never quite justifies the formal rigor he's deployed.
The decision to cast a former special-forces veterinarian rather than just 'tough guy' creates an entire character economy in a single phrase; it's the kind of specificity that makes an 18-minute genre exercise feel authored rather than assembled.