Héctor Belascoarán Shayne (Pedro Armendáriz jr) is private
investigator out of passion - yet his passion is caused more by mystery
novels and true crime reports he likes to read and crime movies and
TV-series he likes to see than by the actual day-to-day work ... which
he's not too good at. Yet he has become a minor TV celebrity for being the
highest scroing contestant on a true crime quiz show. Maybe it's exactly
that what made a serial killer pick him as his chief nemesis - you know,
the kind of nemesis a serial killer likes to call to announce his murders, whom he
likes to threaten and whom he even attempts to kill repeatedly, though
unsuccessfully, which might even be intended. His victims, too, seem to come closer to Belascoarán Shayne's
home all the time. After quite some investigations - most of them done by
his secretary - Belascoarán Shayne actually gets a lead to the real
killer, a prominent regional politician, but when he gets to his house to
apprehend him, the politician has already killed himself slitting his
wrists, and only a tape containing his confession at least proves to Belascoarán Shayne
that he was right. A film that's somehow falling between
stools: On one hand it tries to be a genre parody, and while it's nice to
see it go the subtle path instead of trying too hard to milk the crime
genre of any joke it may contain, it's almost too subtle to really work.
On the other hand though, the film's dead serious (no pun intended) basic
plot doesn't sit too well with the slightly parodistic, light-footed
approach. What remains, are a few good ideas, a great Pedro Armendáriz jr
- but a film that could have been much better.
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