Un mal viaje
2002 · 14m · España
Directed by Freddie Cheronne
Genres: crime, dark comedy, drama
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic, tense
Benito, a forty-something tired of being humiliated by his boss, plans to rob a roadside bar said to hold a lot of money so he can escape to the Caribbean and change his life.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A mid-life escape fantasy wrapped in a crime-caper shell—predictable bones, but Cheronne's refusal to let Benito be either tragic or redeemed is genuinely perverse; most filmmakers would've chosen a lane, and the fact that he doesn't is almost worth the watch.
The melancholic restraint here sits firmly in the lineage of Latin American neo-realism and the dark comedies of the 1980s Spanish cinema; Cheronne's formal control—the pacing, the muted color palette—shows a director aware of where this story lives in film history.
What lifts this from premise-level indie into something memorable is Cheronne's decision to keep the camera close and static during the planning sequences, letting Benito's exhaustion breathe through stillness rather than cutting it into nervous energy—a single formal choice that transforms a heist setup into something genuinely human.