Search - Mar Rojo (Red Sea) on DVD

Low key drama starring Mirabel Verdu

W.Kim | Los Angeles, California United States | 04/12/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"In "Mar Rojo" Verdu plays a stripper who hates her job. One night she stumbles across a cache of stolen money, which she sees as her one chance to get out of her miserable dead end life. Unfortunately for her character, she soon finds herself being hunted by the men who stole the money and is forced into hiding.



I hunted this one down because it stars an actress I like, Mirabel Verdu, who some might recognize as the steely housemaid that spies for the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War in "Pans Labyrinth," as Luisa, the terminally ill woman out for one last fling in the 2001 surprise hit from Mexico, "Y Tu Mama Tambien!" ("And Your Mama Too!,)" and Rocio, one of the sisters bedded by Jorge Sanz' ex-seminarian and AWOL soldier in the 1992 French-Spanish comedy "La Belle Epoque." While I can't say Mar Rojo is a great film, it's a pretty decent, low key" character study about a desperate woman who finds herself in a dangerous situation, and Verdu does a pretty good job of making her character believable and sympathetic, despite some questionable choices. And yes, there are plenty of sequences of her at work, which admittedly was a plus for me. Applying the 1-10 point scale, I'd give this an 8, for her performance, and the directors ability to maintain a consistent dark, realist tone throughout, getting a lot out of what was clearly a pretty low budget to begin with."