‘Caged Wings’ Netflix Movie Review - Mario Casas’ Bleak, Uncomfortable Showreel

Caged Wings, directed by Mario Casas, is a very uncomfortable film. You watch it with your eyes wide open and with a feeling that anything could go wrong at any moment. Even the scenes where the characters - Dan (Óscar Casas), Vio (Candela González), and Reno (Farid Bechara) - hang out and watch a train from a bridge are infused with a sense of foreboding. Something tells you this is the last time these friends will be together and happy. That they will soon get swallowed by an unavoidable tragedy.

The camera is always alert, restless, and uneasy (Edu Canet is the cinematographer). Due to this, the images have an immediacy. We worry about the characters and their future. After a while, though, we realize these characters don't have a bright future. As soon as a robbery goes haywire and Dan hits a police officer on the head, we immediately understand things will only go downhill from here. That drug dealer, too, gives bad vibes, making that climax inevitable, and unsurprising.

The movie opens with a long, seemingly unbroken shot that looks partly ostentatious and partly agile. Casas has made a technically impressive film, but the writing suffers a bit. The characters fail to spark your curiosity. You don't wonder what pushed them into this life or how Vio, Reno, and Dan got to know each other in the first place. You don't care about their history. The movie instantly involves us in the present and keeps going into bleak territories.

Apart from fear, you don't feel anything else while watching this film. The characters relax, smile, make out, and ride a bike. The viewer, however, sees everything with the knowledge that happiness is only temporary. Caged Wings is conceived narrowly. It jumps within a confined box with vigor and apprehensiveness. The characters are pretty close to puppets and don't draw out many emotions from within the audience. The last couple of scenes, mainly, did not work for me. The freeze-frame, the ambiguity, rendered everything laughable. There is no poignancy.

Still, almost everything about Caged Wings can be accepted positively. It's, after all, not a terrible film. It's made with a lot of competence. The actors are mostly fine. Perhaps the most accurate way of describing this film is by labeling it as a showreel. Now, let's see when Casas will make his film.

Final Score- [6.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times