Movie review: ‘Carancho’

Intensely dramatic as well as socially conscious, “Carancho” is powerful stuff. This bleak and gritty Argentine film plays hard but fair as it investigates the personal and societal implications of a story of corruption that is ripped with a vengeance from that country’s headlines.

The situation in question is a plague of deadly traffic accidents that kills more than 8,000 people a year and leaves in its wake more than 120,000 injured and a boom in compensation cases. As the film’s press notes put it, “behind every tragedy, there is an industry,” and “Carancho” explores the emotional impact of that situation.

Though he’s not well known in this country, director and co-screenwriter Pablo Trapero is one of Argentina’s top young talents. Here, as in his previous “Lion’s Den,” he’s working with the compelling actress Martina Gusman (who is also his wife). Costarring with her is Ricardo Darín, the protagonist of the Oscar-winning “The Secret in Their Eyes” and perhaps Argentina’s top star.

Darín plays Sosa, the carancho, or vulture, of the title, a sad-eyed ambulance-chasing attorney who has lost his license and makes a living pouncing on injured people at accident scenes and persuading them to let him pursue their claims.

Sosa is in the employ of a so-called foundation that says it’s on the victim’s side but ultimately makes off with most of the money it gets from suing insurance companies. Yes, Sosa admits, the injured parties are getting ripped off, but they are jobless and without insurance, and “this is the best they can get.”

Sosa offers that self-defense to Luján (Gusman), a young doctor new to Buenos Aires who juggles several jobs, including ambulance medic and hospital ER doctor. She is more innocent than Sosa, but no one stays innocent long in this world and, besides, Luján turns out to have dark areas of her own.

These two meet at the scene of a traffic accident, she to help the victim, he to try to sign him up. There is an immediate attraction between them but also immediate difficulties, not the least of which is that both are driven and exhausted, basically good people wrung out and compromised by a corrupt system with tentacles everywhere.

One interesting aspect of “Carancho” is its connection with classic film noirs of the 1940s, its sense of individuals trapped and over their heads in a world not of their own making, a world where no one is completely without sin and no easy ways of escape are available.

Working with his excellent cast and a fine cinematographer in Julián Apezteguia, director Trapero creates a sense of verisimilitude with “Carancho,” encouraging us to genuinely care about the characters and making this melodramatic story feel less manipulative and more honest and real.

As in all fatalistic film noirs, Sosa and Luján end up involved in situations that rapidly spiral out of control. Ethical questions get complex, lines that should not be crossed get blurred. Like all tainted innocents, these two wonder if they have the strength of character and the luck necessary to break free of the kind of entanglements that only deep and pervasive corruption creates.

For our part, all we can do is hold our breath and wish them luck.

kenneth.turan@latimes.com