‘Siege’: The ‘Die Cristal’ by Natalia de Molina with a social charge that will keep you glued to the seat

‘Siege’ shows once again that the Spanish thriller is still in excellent shape, and Natalia de Molina is becoming a queen of the genre up to names like Luis Tosar (‘Fatum’, ‘Whoever kills with iron’, ‘While you sleep’, ‘The unknown’…) or Antonio de la Torre (‘May God forgive us’, ‘Late for anger’, ‘The kingdom’, ‘The minimal island’…).

Natalia de Molina is Dani, a young riot police officer who unloads the frustrations of her personal life on her job while enduring the macho and patronizing comments of his brigade mates. Dani does his job robotically, without empathizing with the people in front of him and limiting himself to following orders, but everything changes when an eviction gets complicated and he discovers that not everything is black or white, and that uniform and skin color lead to unnecessary, classist and racist prejudices.

The actress from Spanish suspense films such as ‘Who will sing to you’, ‘Animals without a collar’, ‘Adiós’ and ‘La maneuver de la tortoise’ stars again in an action film making it clear that she is one of the best actresses on the national scene and its genre versatility. In ‘Siege’ the challenge was even greater, since the film is largely based on his presence through extensive sequence shots that chase her through a building full of threats (The good hand of Miguel Angel Vivas continues to be noticed after the excellent ‘Kidnapped’ and ‘Your son’).

After a leisurely start, keeping the shots to infinity and suggesting more than showing, ‘Siege’ becomes a Spanish-style ‘The Raid (Murderous Raid)’ in a tremendously hostile block of flats against the police. Dani has to flee and hide in a game of cat and mouse that increases the tension until our nails are like stumps, but the enemy is not the tenants of the evicted homes, but her own “colleagues”.

The SUP union is not very happy with the image that Spanish films and series usually have of the police. They have already raised their voices against ‘Riot Control’, the magnificent Movistar+ series by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, and have once again denounced the national film industry with ‘Siege’, rejecting the corrupt and violent representation of the FCSE in the film. Perhaps we should remind them of the meaning of “fiction”, or ask them why have they pressured to eliminate the “based on true events” from all the promotion of the film… That there would be a reason.

Dani herself is faced with various moral dilemmas throughout the film, evolving as a person as she realizes It is part of the problem and not the solution., as she thought. Life is not as easy as dividing people into good and bad. There are bad guys and there are people who do their best to survive, even if it means breaking the laws out of necessity or out of ideological conviction of social justice. Dani is learning the hard way, realizing that its mission, above any order and any role, is to “serve and protect”.

Transforming into Bruce Willis’ John McClane in ‘Die Die,’ Natalia de Molina changes the “Yippee Ki-Yay, motherfucker” for a “You’re going to eat all my pussy” in a final stretch worthy of the most iconic figures in action cinema, and the film ends with a question, which is what should have been asked long before. The important thing was this. Wake up.