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Description:
A reckless Basque terrorist and a junkie prostitute fall in lust in the petty criminal underworld of Madrid in Imanol Uribe's loose update of Prosper Merimée's classic Carmen (by way of Juan Madrid's novel Dias Contados). Antonio (Carmelo Gómez, star of Julio Medem's The Red Squirrel and Lovers of the Arctic Circle) is a soldier in the violent guerrilla organization ETA, laying low in a crummy apartment until his next mission. His sexy neighbor Charo (Ruth Gabriel) invites herself into his place, shoots up in his bathroom, takes a bath, and then vamps her naked body in an impromptu photo shoot. Talk about meeting cute. Gabriel's aimless Charo survives her world of bullying cops, violent drug dealers, and mercenary opportunists by simply floating along and flirting her way through. Antonio is hardly a sympathetic hero, an insolent member of a hated and feared terrorist organization (it's an affiliation that carries quite a wallop in Spain), and Gomez gives a simmering performance full of anger and frustration, a self-destructive man numb from violence. After a life of cheap sexual encounters, Charo is his salvation. For all the violence, sordid underworld scheming, and hothouse eroticism, Running Out of Time carries a passionately romantic twist to a volatile, violent tragedy. The DVD also features a Spanish-language (English-subtitled) featurette with interviews and film clips, and a longer interview with Ruth Gabriel (who became a breakout star in the wake of her performance) discussing the edgy politics and rampant eroticism of the picture. --Sean Axmaker
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