Film review: Sin Retorno

On a normal summer’s night in Buenos Aires, three young men – a high school student, a ventriloquist and a tattoo artist – are making their way across the city. An accident takes place that will irrevocably alter the fates of all three, and their families. This simple yet potent premise sets the scene for a masterful thriller, even more impressive for being Miguel Cohan’s directorial debut. In Hollywood hands, the storyline could have led to sentimentality and implausible coincidence. Not here – Sin Retorno’s power lies in the realism and straightness of the presentation.

Debbie Stowe

The film doesn’t need exaggeration or high-octane fripperies to make its point. Aside from the accident , and one other brief scene of violence (fairly low level by movie standards), there is very little action, as such. And yet this slow-build film is one of the most compelling thrillers I’ve seen in a long time.

It’s fun watching Harrison Ford get his wife back from kidnappers or Bruce Willis vanquish a squad of terrorists singlehandedly, but it’s also pure fantasy. In Sin Retorno, every character is believable. The loving parents who lie to the insurance company to protect their son, the equally loving parent who doggedly seeks justice for his, the ordinary Joe who after a minor prang is swept up into a nightmare of false accusations – they could be any of us.

The film doesn’t have heroes and villains. It has ordinary people in extraordinary situations, and explores the effects their moral choices have on them, the snowballing of a lie until there is literally no way back.

Cohan achieves this partly with the screenplay, which he co-wrote with his sister. It takes its time to establish all the characters as plausible, everyday people. One couple bickers about who does which chores; a high school student’s attempts to chat up a pretty classmate are ruined by a clumsy friend; a father and son reminisce over childhood papers. It is all so tense because we know disaster must be coming.

But it’s also achieved by impressive performances from the cast. One actor – I won’t reveal who to avoid a spoiler – is so astonishingly changed by a spell in prison that he looks like a different person. Sophisticated yet simple and gripping throughout, Sin Retorno should be a template for thriller directors.