At least, David Victori's Firebreak/Cortafuego manages to leave you huffing and puffing. The shaky camera, by following its panicking characters closely, warms you up and gets your blood flowing. It makes you take quick breaths; this is a "workout movie."
Why are the characters panicking? Because a young girl, Lide (Candela Martínez), has gone missing. She is the daughter of a grieving widow named Mara (Belén Cuesta), who, with her brother-in-law, Luis (Joaquín Furriel), and his wife, Elena (Diana Gómez), has come to her summer house one last time. She wants to sell the house because it reminds her of her dead husband. All Mara wants to do is take essential items and leave. But Lide wants to properly say goodbye to her dad before leaving, and she pesters her mother to take her to a nearby cabin. Mara refuses, but Lide—without informing anybody—goes on her own, and soon she's nowhere in sight.
Santiago (Enric Auquer), a neighbor, was the last person to see Lide at that cabin. He looks gentle, sweet, and shy. He even gives Lide a gift near the beginning of the film. But this amiable guy becomes a suspect when he doesn't allow Mara to enter one of the rooms in his cabin. What is he hiding? Has he kidnapped Lide? Santiago talks about some rituals. Is he part of a cult? Is this benign man secretly creepy? These are the questions that run through Mara and Luis's minds, and then... let's just say things start to go downhill.
As a thriller, Firebreak is too tame to put you on the edge of your seat. Remember the shaky camera I mentioned above? It works overtime to sell thrills; it merely creates an illusion of urgency. Victori, with his co-writers Javier Echániz, Asier Guerricaechebarría, and Ion Iriarte, establishes a metaphorical connection between the fire raging outside in the forest and the fire burning inside Mara and Luis, consuming them with anger, frustration, and hostility. But it's too literal to work as effective subtext—even a Mama Bear reference is too direct, which is why it looks silly.
With Firebreak, Victori is more concerned with saying something, with making an "important point." He wants to show how desperate, cruel, and disoriented humans become when they perceive someone they love to be in great danger, leading them to act violently, irrationally, and irresponsibly. This, however, is unilluminating stuff, and it comes across as thin in a movie with no great ambitions on its mind. Firebreak is self-contained and undistinguished. It's fragile—it burns and perishes in its own mediocrity.
Final Score- [3.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times