04/12/2025 - The debut feature film by talented screenwriter Rafael Cobos breathes new life into the 1980s subgenre of juvenile delinquency, but sadly its characters lack personality

“Dad is dead. Sleep”. This is the response little Miguel receives from his big brother Sabino after his anti-Franco father has been identified by a Civil Guard squad in their remote cottage in the Seville countryside, chased and then killed in the fields. It’s a dramatic prologue for Rafael Cobos’ first work, Golpes [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which is competing in the Noir in Festival following its premiere in Seminci, and which is released in Spain on 5 December via A Contracorriente Films. Twenty years later, Spain has changed radically: it’s now a free country which is unstable but bursting with opportunities. We see Migueli (Jesús Carroza) getting out of prison and returning to the village in which he grew up with one sole purpose: exhuming his father’s body, which has been buried in the field of an elderly Franco sympathiser, in order to give him the proper burial he deserves.

Staying with an old female friend, Migueli attaches himself to her daughter, Angelita (Teresa Garzón), who sees him as a local Robin Hood (“they say you only steal from fascists”), and together they decide to carry out a series of robberies to pull together the necessary money -  9 million pesetas – to buy the land in which his father’s body is buried. Unfortunately, Migueli’s older brother Sabino, played by the famous Luis Tosar, has become the local police commissioner. In the throes of an existential and marital crisis alongside his wife, Rosa (Cristina Alcázar), Sabino dreams of retiring early and living out his days on a beach in Portugal. But his boss will only yield to his whim once Sabino has captured Migueli. Thus, the two brothers engage in a long-distance duel, where true victory for either will prove nigh-on impossible. Migueli and Angelita’s accomplices become few and far between – some are killed, others betray them once captured – and the net closes in on the bandit carrying out robberies unmasked, in a region where everyone knows one another.

Sergi Vilanova Claudín’s expert photography recreates the colours of the 1980s and Darío García García’s editing includes short inserts on film of everyday life in Andalusia at that time, while the set design and costumes departments, entrusted to Gigia Pellegrini and Lourdes Fuentes respectively, also do a wonderful job of reconstructing that period. The dramatic nature of the two brothers’ confrontation is thoroughly foregrounded by Bronquio’s music, whose piercing violins and percussion are dazzlingly original.

Rafael Cobos won two Goya Awards for Best Screenplay thanks to his work in the brilliant movie Marshland [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alberto Rodríguez
film profile] (2014) and in Smoke & Mirrors [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alberto Rodríguez
film profile] (2016), both of which were directed by Alberto Rodríguez. He also he created the miniseries The Left-Handed Son (2023), which triumphed in Canneseries, and scripted four episodes of The Anatomy of a Moment [+see also:
series review
series profile] (2025), among other works. The screenplay for Golpes, written by the director in league with Fernando Navarro, demonstrates significant emotional involvement when it comes to breathing new life into Quinqui films (about juvenile delinquents), a Spanish subgenre from the 80s, which he refines and enriches with high themes such as the importance of preserving the memory of the country resisting the dictatorship, and family ties, at a time when Spanish society was undergoing significant change. The film has many irons in the fire, and exploring the dynamics between brothers (or friends) on opposite sides of the law whilst carving out memorable characters and a gripping plot hasn’t proved an easy feat either. Despite offering up a fascinating 102-minute spectacle, Golpes’ protagonists aren’t ever endowed with the personality required to draw viewers in, the political (rather than monetary) basis of the robberies isn’t properly explored, the clash between the two brothers is tenuous and unresolved, and the fast pace of the action never reaches any real crescendo, while the penultimate scene (which we won’t give away) presents a solution equally lacking in credibility.

Golpes was co-produced by Spain and France via Vaca Films and Películas Grupo Tranquilo in league with Playtime. World sales are entrusted to Playtime.

(Translated from Italian)