«4x4» - Movie Review by Kinoafisha

A small-time crook in Argentina breaks into a parked SUV. After taking the stereo and defiling the leather seats, he's ready to make his getaway, but he can't unlock the car from the inside. Lady Luck didn't take into account the cunning of new technologies. The owner of the car received a notification of the break-in on his phone and remotely locked all controls inside. The owner also contacts the thief and informs him that the interior is armored, bulletproof, and soundproof. The windows are heavily tinted, so nothing can be seen from the outside. The protagonist of the story finds himself in a four-wheeled coffin.

The thief panics and thrashes around for the first twenty minutes of the film. Trying to destroy someone else's property, he only ends up destroying himself. He fails to break down the door; the burglar only earns himself bruises. He shoots at the glass, and the bullet hits him in the leg. From then on, only survival in impossible conditions is possible. The hero licks surfaces, eats paper, drinks his own urine, and gradually loses his sanity. It is reminiscent of other survival films set in closed spaces, like "Buried" or "127 Hours."

Sometimes the owner calls from inside the car, playing God like the maniac from "Saw." He presses a button - and the air conditioner in the SUV brings hellish cold. He presses another - and the heater almost turns the thief into a patty on the grill. The car owner admits to the protagonist that he has been robbed 28 times. So, the 29th robber was unlucky; he is doomed to death.

At the thief's pocket, by the way, his mobile phone ran out of battery, so he can't make a call and ask for help. Sadly, nowadays many directors have to resort to a similar trick. If the protagonist in dire circumstances is equipped with a phone and internet, the film will quickly come to an end.

But the character's ordeal must last long enough to serve as a moralizing resolution. In this sense, the motif of "Robinson Crusoe" is intriguing here. When the trap's prey manages to eat and drink, he, like a satisfied primitive man, first turns to "art." Using the pencils he found in the glove compartment, the hero decorates the interior with "cave paintings" and profanity.

Then he contemplates lowly philosophical concepts of "take everything and divide." And next, animism awakens as the beginning of a religious sentiment. By chance, a cricket ends up in the car, and the thief "befriends" it and can't bring himself to eat it. Finally, he sets the insect free through a small hole in the door.

Thus, Kona's film seems to strive for metaphysical generalization. Especially since it turns out that the car owner is a doctor-obstetrician by profession. An illiterate scoundrel who tried to bite off more than he could chew is destined for a rebirth through the torments of claustrophobia. However, the film's track, intentionally or not, leads to social indictment.

It must be said, judging by "4x4," the crime situation in Argentina is simply monstrous. When a person leaves their garage, their family and loved ones check the surroundings for suspicious individuals five times, or else you'll be left without a car, a garage, and a home. That's why there are two instances in the film where almost spontaneous lynching of the robbers is about to occur - the townsfolk can no longer bear it and wait for help from outside. Capitalism inevitably breeds criminals, and violence only strengthens them.

The pathos may be justified, but it feels somewhat bland for such a plot. Instead of an existential story about a person alone with themselves, committing a crime and receiving punishment, we simply get a topical play. When the trap-like car finally ignites, it becomes one of the cars set on fire by terrorists in the streets of a capitalist city, whether it be Buenos Aires, Paris, or Moscow. But that's it.

Except, perhaps, the last minute of the film, dedicated to the adventures of the freed cricket, brings us back to more interesting thoughts, reminiscent of Volker Schlöndorff's immortal short film "Enlightenment," which tells the story of a mosquito, God, and a flytrap.