The Marked Woman (now on Netflix) is a Spanish thriller full of cops: bad cops, worse cops, troubled cops, stupid cops, corrupt cops, conflicted cops, clueless cops, cops who shouldn’t be cops. Did I forget “good cops”? Yeah, they don’t make for good movie protagonists, although an argument could be made for the cop played by Candela Pena (All About My Mother), who anti-glams it up as a cop who’s just as troubled as she is good. She’s complex, is what I’m saying. But I’m not sure the character is done justice in this exercise in convoluted coppery.
The Gist: Lucia (Kira Miro) is distraught. She’s tied up in some cop shit and she ain’t even a cop. She’s an informant being encouraged in italics (please note the italics) to rat on the cop who’s her contact, as evidence for an internal affairs investigation. Before that, though, she secretly passes a note to a Woman With Bangs (Ana Rujas) in the Algeciras bus station bathroom, in a shot revealing that they both have the same birthmark on their hand. When she’s done, she’ll be transported to Barcelona for a new job being promised to her, which, from the look and smell and general feel of things, is almost certainly better than her old job.
Three months later, a shipping container on the Barcelona dock is cracked open and inside is the same Woman With Bangs, trussed up and rather short of memory. She was tortured so horribly, she developed amnesia. “Your mind is protecting you” is the assessment of a doctor who found nothing physically wrong with her. But her mind is also not allowing her to remember her own name or even the basics of who she is. She’s sent to the hospital and then we jump to Sgt. Anna Ripoll (Pena), who’s given the case by her soon-to-be-frustrated-by-her-inability-to-follow-orders superior Enric (Carlos Troya), despite his concerns. She’s fresh off leave after an as-yet-unspecified traumatic event that put her into therapy and has her sadly obsessing over photos of her and her brother. Will work make things worse or help her get her mind off her depression? We’re about to find out.
Ripoll grouses to Enric that Woman With Bangs might be in enough of a precarious situation to need security, but he shrugs it off because the force is shorthanded and then she’s proven right when a goon dressed like an orderly whips out a boxcutter and – well, dude gets his tushie whupped in the movie’s best sequence. Our amnesiac has some moves, muscle memory-type stuff that has her headbutting and hip-tossing some formidable competition. At this point we hoped The Marked Woman might nod in the general direction of a mid-2000s Angelina Jolie kickasser, but no, that’s about the extent of the fun, because this plot cheaps out on the action and indulges a tangled quasi-procedural involving Zarate (Pol Lopez), the National Police Cop who was the subject of Lucia’s squealing. Ripoll ends up paired with the guy, who’s a sweaty little greaseball claiming he was framed, and he wants to find Lucia — who’s now missing, by the way — so she can clear his name. And of course, Woman With Bangs (And Now Amnesia) has something to do with all this. Then again, maybe she’s faking the memory loss? Either way, the plot details are gonna trickle out eventually.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Shades of gritty cop stuff like Serpico or Training Day here, but the end result is more along the lines of borderline-boilerplate 2000s stuff that’s mostly lost to time, e.g., Brooklyn’s Finest.
Performance Worth Watching: Pena gives the type of performance where she seems to be searching for depth in her character, but the writer didn’t give her any. She’s certainly convincing delivering that one note, though.
Sex And Skin: None.
Our Take: With The Marked Woman, director Gabe Ibanez blends elements of action thrillers, psychological dramas, and police procedurals, and ends up with a tonally consistent, decently acted, visually acceptable mediocrity. (Obviously, I reserve my more superlative superlatives for movies that deserve them.) This one is just so much bland paste, the result of a workmanlike approach to material that maybe tries to do too much and ends up doing not nearly enough and sometimes shows the seams of what’s most likely a modest budget that doesn’t make room for even a passable car chase. It’s as if the film aims to be a genre potboiler, but lacks commitment to and confidence in the screenplay, which frankly could stand to be punched-up with some memorable dialogue and/or one single character who ekes out a smile once in a millennia.
The Ripoll character’s arc is underdeveloped, as if the filmmakers sought to avoid cliches and ended up avoiding anything of interest. Meanwhile, our Amnesiac With Bangs is, for the most part, more plot device than human being. Zarate’s swinging from “sleazy asshat who doesn’t care for the cop rules” to pseudo-sympathetic, sort of nice guy is unconvincing. His complexities feeling tacked-on out of desperation for an emotional foothold. Beyond that, this movie is little more than different shades of cops doing the usual cop things. It peaks with the aforementioned fight sequence — which progresses from a hospital room to a precarious way-high-up fire escape — and a couple of suspenseful third-act moments, but it’s not enough to elevate any of the film’s proceedings above that most damning of Millennial assessments: mid AF.
Our Call: The word of the day is underwhelming, kids. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.