To say that this movie is disjointed is an understatement. It seems to have been spliced together with many (one would hope) useful scenes left on the cutting room floor. The dialog is awkward, with Banderas' accented English and Connelly's fake version of the same.(The Stafania Sandrellis character seems wasted and it's interesting to compare her role here with "The Nymph" which was supposedly made or released in the same year (1996). She seems like two completely different persons (actors) in the two films. It's interesting to learn that she speaks English--unless her lines were dubbed.) There are references to the tyranny of the regime but we don't see exactly how that affected the lives of most people -- only bizarre situations that couldn't have been commonplace. The Connelly character talks about getting past the censors but it's not made clear how this worked. Was everything in Chile submitted to censors at the time? Talk about a big government bureaucracy! And the motivations of the characters are never really developed. What clue did we have that Connelly's cousin was really a good guy underneath his facist exterior? Was the Cardinal an appeaser or a crusader? And what's with the sex scene. Does Banderas have a clause in his contract that he gets to show his tush in every film? This looked like it was added after audiences said they wanted to see more heat--especially after the earlier teaser scene between Connelly's character and her cousin, where the camera conveniently cut off at critical angles and the scene itself ended abruptly with whatever was going to happen left up to the viewers imagination.

So after a Greek director tells us about Chile coup in « missing », a Chilean actress tells us about El Salvador in « Voces », now we have a Spanish actor back to Chile, bringing along the most delicious American actress, Jennifer Connelly ! I thought it would be a stinker but i was wrong as it's an excellent politic and romance thriller and surely one of the best part for Jennifer ! Unlike a lot of her Hollywood friends, she gets an inspired hand to pick movies that have something to tell : here, it's about liberty, democracy, being dissident and making moral choices. Banderas is also deeply focused and concerned and the production is really well-done. This movie has a real emotional and educative content as it explains why human rights and liberty begin and end in the hands of individuals and not elected or tyrannic representatives.

The subject matter of this movie couldn't be anymore serious. This movie failed because the studio advertised this as a passionate movie between Antonio and Jennifer. The poster and box cover for the movie shows them engaged, half naked in the middle of an act of love. In the first 10 minutes of the movie, we see some kind of a foreplay situation between Jennifer and her cousin / lover. Then, the climax of the movie has nothing to do with the investigation they had been on. The movie peeks when both Antonio and Jennifer make love. While the one scene has been said to be the only good part of the movie, I must agree that the studios allowed the audience to believe that this movie was going to be packed with sex, sex, nudity, and more sex. You can't sell a box of cereal with a naked woman on the cover and then have the cereal filled with little marsh mellow religious figures of Christ and Saint Peter and Paul. Much like the cereal, the movie has its moments but fails to hold an audience because everybody is waiting for the sex scene. The movie tries to get serious but we are overwhelmed by the eye candy that is Jennifer and Antonio that we can't wait for the passion to take over.