The Secret In Their Eyes (2009)

The Secret In Their Eyes is something we Brits are very adept at making sucessfully: literary adaptations. 
Except this film is Argentinian; maybe this is a rare success in a type of cinema they don't normally make there. I'm ashamed to shame I don't know much about Argentinian cinema apart from Nine Queens, which I saw and basically liked. Both films share the same leading actor Ricardo Darin, I would perceive he is the Argentinian equivalent of a George Clooney- all charisma and gruffly charm.
If this film reminded me of the sort of crime procedural that almost litter British television; where a person goes back to investigate an old vicious crime to get closure on 'the one that got away'. I'm not saying they're always on our tv but it's the type of thing the BBC, Channel 4 and even ITV throw money at and make the centrepieces of their schedules. Here a former criminal prosecutor revisits a case from his past that never sat well with him on how it ended and since he's in retirement, he plans on writing a novel about the story; in which 25years before he had to investigate the case of a young woman to was brutally abused and murdered. It's not that he's not certain who the killer was- it's more that he was never brought to justice.
I'm afraid that I'm going to have to disagree with 'the Academy' for giving this a best Foreign Film Oscar. I mean for what it is, I'd say it was pretty well made buuut I'd also say it was pretty 'by-the-numbers' but maybe I'm just burnt out on these sorts of story after watching too many 9pm tv detective dramas and Stieg Larsson; with it's long arching timeline; covert characters and violent crime, it's difficult to shake off the feeling of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo while watching this. If you said I was judging this by an unfair yard-stick, I'd readily concede that. I'm sure I'd like this a lot more if I'd seen/read it before '...Dragon Tattoo'. There is a good story about revenge and punishment; the character of the husband of the murdered woman is a fascinating one with his ideas about punishing violent criminals mirroring my own.
The Secret In Their Eyes is just unlucky I guess that it fell in the gap of things i've seen before but prehaps the makers of it had not, like a great idea you have, that has incidentally been done before...

I watched The Secret In Their Eyes (2009) on DVD via LoveFilm.

My 2011 in Movies will return with Sugar (2009)...