Writer-director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's Intacto probably would have been a national sensation in Spain if it didn't have the misfortune of being released in the same year as Alejandro Amenábar's The Others.  Intacto was up for eight Goyas (the Spanish Oscar) but only managed to win two awards (including Fresnadillo for Best New Director) because The Others dominated the night like a supposedly unsinkable boat that rammed into an iceberg.  The film's misfortune will continue through our own Oscars show, which allows just one entry per country into the Best Foreign Film race.  Spain selected Fernando Leon's Mondays in the Sun to face certain annihilation against behemoths like Roberto Benigni's Pinocchio (Italy) and Fernando Meirelles' City of God (Brazil).

Pretty appropriate, that bit above about the bad luck, especially when you consider that the whole premise of Intacto is luck.  The film's opening scene takes place in a casino on the Spanish island of Tenerife.  A gambler is having a hell of a successful run at the roulette table...that is until a mysterious gentleman lightly touches his hand and, apparently, somehow drains the luck right out of him.

We eventually learn, after he retreats to the bowels of the casino, the mystery man is Federico (Eusebio Poncela), the longtime protégé of casino owner Samuel (Max von Sydow).  The two men have an unusual father-son relationship, which is made even stranger by Samuel's insistence that only Federico is allowed to see his face.  But that's not all.  Both men are survivors of separate tragedies – Federico lived through a deadly earthquake, while Samuel was one of a handful who made it through a Nazi concentration camp during World War II (making von Sydow seem a whole lot like Ian McKellen's Magneto from X-Men).  But that's still not all. Both men also believe that luck is not only something a person is born with, it's also something tangible that can be given and taken away.

While in the casino's office basement, Federico tells Samuel he's breaking out on his own.  Samuel appears hurt but gives his student a farewell hug that seems innocent but ultimately saps Federico of his powers of luck. Flash to seven years later, where Federico is searching for his own lucky protégé to exact his revenge on Samuel (you know, the whole student-becoming-the-teacher thing).  After paying an insurance investigator for a tip, Federico discovers a recent plane crash in which every passenger but one instantly died.  The survivor – Tomás (Leonardo Sbaraglia) – is a petty thief being pursued by the police, but Federico doesn't care.  He takes the lad under his wing and quickly discovers Tomás is even luckier than he had originally believed.

What follows is a very bizarre blend of Reservoir Dogs, Fight Club, Unbreakable and Croupier (all films I thought were terrific, but your mileage may very) as Federico introduces Tomás into the unnerving world of underground betting on strange events that usually involve blindfolds but always require no skills other than luck.  There's also an interesting romantic subplot involving a cop named Sara (Mónica López) who is both hot on the heels of Tomás and struggling with some bittersweet luck of her own (she survived a car crash that killed the rest of her family).

Intacto might sound like a feature-film version of something you might ordinarily see on an episode of The X-Files, but it's so much cooler because it has the time to develop its limited number of characters.  The acting is solid and the photography is strong enough to permanently brand several scenes into your memory.  Award geeks should have known Fresnadillo's name long before Intacto hit theatres – he won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film in 1996.  And if Intacto is any indication, it will only be a matter of time before we hear another of Fresnadillo's acceptance speeches.

1:48 -

for language, some violence and brief nudity