Something strange happens to me with Mario Casas. On the one hand, he seems like a good actor to me, but on the other hand, the same character always appears to me, regardless of the role he plays. It must be something from his marked presence or his rather low tone of voice, like an effort to whisper his interpretations.
I would say that he is an efficient actor, who delivers, a lucky guy, who gets good roles, which he ends up playing successfully. But it seems to me that he lacks something else, that plus that could make him an actor loaded with greater acting ranges.
Even so, since he has been one of the most valued and required actors in the Spanish film scene, I bring him to this blog to rescue his best films, always in my opinion.
Top 3 Recommended Mario Casas Movies
The practitioner
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:For me, in this film, Mario Casas almost manages to get out of his own loop to offer us an interpretation that is very close to the protagonist's skin. He would only have to park that monotone tone, that fixed inflection of his voice to break here as a more versatile actor.
The rest of the aspects are convincing in their interpretation. Because there is a point of transformation like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or like a Phantom of the Opera, or Dorian Gray... I guess you understand what I mean... The type that ends up immersed in his own shadows. The lucky man who is finally appeased by fate.
In the end Ángel, the name of the young practitioner who is paralyzed after an accident, reaches us with that resentment about his own existence, about his life plans with his girl and the harsh reality of what remains of him. And in the face of such frustration, Ángel decides to take complete revenge.
His girlfriend is getting further and further away from him. Because his life passes only through the wheelchair that clings to an unsuspected destiny from which he is unable to overcome. And when Ángel ends up letting himself be carried away by his demons, his whole life and that of those around him becomes a disturbing hell…
The Innocent
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:Being this series so long it can be considered as a film to be reviewed. In fact, if you watch it straight away, it takes longer than a movie. Here too Mario achieves a level of great intensity except for the details indicated around his more textual interpretations and pronunciation to which I do not want to constantly allude. In this Inocente versioning the novel by Harlan coben, Mario Casas, the disturbing Mat guides us to the most labyrinthine dark side.
A great series that maintains the tension and that can hook you to the point of losing half the night with that desire to "come on, one more chapter and I'll leave it..." And that the jump between the first and the second chapter is something radical, as if you had made a mistake when selecting that new chapter, as if those of Netflix had gone over the top and uploaded two consecutive episodes of a different series to streaming.
But it is to appear Alexandra Jimenez (Lorena) out there with her gaze that crosses the camera and give an immediate vote of confidence to the matter. Although, if it is to touch the balls a little with details, the wig that Lorena from the Chinese bazaar is fitted with, at times it can confuse you ...
And after the second chapter, divergent but necessary to link the plot from the two branches around Mateo and Lorena, we are entering a wheel of emotions where each character is presented as the victim on duty. Because life hurts, wears out, changes and even torture depending on which underworlds you have to live or what random hells you have to go through ...
Women trying to get out of prostitution; a powerful father, a great surgeon to say the least (great Gonzalo de Castro), with a contained hatred that can lead to anything; Scantily clad nuns who alternate Masses with profane parishes ... Thus ends the convent, full of haircloths with which to appease guilt and secrets.
We add, of course, corruption and black money, trafficking of white women and unimaginable abuses for depraved white-collar minds. A tinderbox made a plot as an anthology of amorality.
Researchers from a UDE who never really know what they are looking for. Something like the CIA when they seem to fuel the criminal to end up reaching other spheres of greater crime. A José Coronado shamelessly in charge of covering up the miseries of judges or politicians or anyone else who has participated in the rugged wild side of the world.
You don't know where everything is going to break. But the matter points to unexpected twists. Because we continue to add betrayals while the lives of Lorena and Mateo are presented to us with their due flashbacks so that we can connect the dots or at least try. Around the two of them, the rest of the characters in the series also shine with that light typical of performances perfectly pasted with scenography and characterization of psychological profiles in a world full of tribulations, sorrows and guilt ...
But there are no two fundamental characters without a third in contention that is placed at their height. That is the case of Olivia, Mat's girlfriend, with an also essential role on which that sordid aspect of pimping with foothills never imagined pivots and which underpins the turns to come. Because the plan that Olivia devises to get out of her life entails vital ruptures like earthquakes that will end up replicating in a future completely irreconcilable with the stormy past.
And yes, everything explodes with the precision of a takedown. Only when the building falls and among the rubble we discover our protagonists more or less alive, there is still the final explosion, the one that remains as an echo resounding in our consciousness ...
The bar
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:One more film to rescue from Mario Casas, although this time it is more due to the baton of Alex de la Iglesia, capable of providing suspense to the most unexpected scene…
Claustrophobic like that Cabina de Antonio Mercero. Only here the matter is not a soliloquy but a choral song of sinister personalities. Something like those movies of characters locked in a house with a dead man on the table.
But of course, being Álex de la Iglesia who runs the show, the matter is duly rarefied to bring out the worst and worst (yes, the worst and worst) of each of its diverse characters. Nobody can leave that bar that has brought them there as only the most unsuspected centripetal forces can. Little by little the entanglement is sinking between the characters, blackening everything. Because all of them have this pending guilt, the reason that has led them there as sinners in the face of their last torture ...
Mario Casas here also manages to provide tension to his character (damn, he only needs to take a Demosthenes-style pronunciation course to gain vocal resources) and ends up being one of the protagonists with the greatest "rennet" of the atomized representation.