Directed by Mariano Cohn
Written by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat
Starring Peter Lanzani and Dady Brieva
1 hour 30 minutes
Language: Spanish
Unrated – violence and language
Available for digital rental 2/2

by Audrey Callerstrom, Staff Writer

Sometime around 2016, a man named Roberto Desumvila had grown fed up with the rampant crime in his neighborhoods in Brazil and Argentina, namely theft and burglary. After having his car stolen on multiple occasions, Desumvila devised a plan. What if he could turn each car into its own little prison, locking the thief inside? There, he could capture them and turn them over to the authorities. The car he created would be soundproof, bulletproof, and have polarized windows so no one could see inside. Additionally, the car wouldn’t be able to move. Once he carried this out, he was indeed able to trap criminals in his car. “I invented this to hunt down criminals like you!” Desumvila claims he shouted at a thief. 

Director Mariano Cohn created a feature-length thriller based on this premise, called 4x4. The thief in question is named Ciro (Peter Lanzani, an actor, singer, model, and former member of the Argentinian teen supergroup, Teen Angels). 4x4 wastes little time with exposition, only showing us a neighborhood full of security cameras and barbed wire. Ciro busts into a silver SUV (a fictional model called “Predator”) with a tennis ball (you can do that?!), and, after removing the car’s stereo and urinating over the backseat, finds he cannot get out. No one can hear him, he can’t operate the car, and no one can see inside. The battery on his cell phone, as movie conventions dictate, is dead. Worse yet, the car itself is bulletproof. Ciro assumes he can shoot out the windshield; instead, the bullet ricochets and enters his thigh.

The majority of 4x4 plays out like 127 Hours. Instead of a trapped naïve adventurist, we have a trapped criminal. After several hours, Ciro is reduced to drinking his own urine to stay hydrated, licking condensation off the windows, and eating pages of the car manual for sustenance. A voice comes on the car’s speaker system; the owner of the car is Doctor Enrique Ferrari (Dady Brieva), and he is punishing Ciro for his crime (among other things). Lanzani is a capable actor and enjoyable to watch as the only performer on screen for a majority of the film’s running time. But the entire thing feels too much like a literal adaptation of the real-life events that took place. If I show you a movie where someone is in a car, what would you your best guess on what might happen next? 

a). The car moves.
b). The car sits there.
c). The car explodes.

The correct answer to this question is a), although I would also accept c). It’s frustrating to watch a man trapped in a tiny space which we expect to move. Cohn could have started with the “trapped in a car” concept, and taken it further. What if, through the car, Ciro was driven places and required to perform a series of tasks? What if there was a bomb in the car that would go off if Ciro didn’t complete the tasks?

Films like 127 Hours and Buried were able to tell stories about being trapped in a confined space in such a way that the viewer never felt like we were just stuck in one place. In 127 Hours, we saw flashbacks, hallucinations, fantasies, memories. In Buried, we saw what the stakes were, understood what was  happening outside the box Ryan Reynolds was trapped in, and how added elements (a snake!) could add suspense. None of that happens here. Ciro is trapped and he’s pissed and he’s hungry and he’s thirsty. He has a wife and child, but they never really come up. At a concise 90 minutes, after watching Ciro struggle inside the car for the first hour, the film doesn’t really know where it wants to go. It had some moments of curiosity–Ciro sees the cricket in the car with him as a companion, although it could easily serve as a snack. Ciro observes the outside world and the routines of the neighborhood, and is even subjected to a couple pressed up against the window, engaged in sex. But it starts to drag and grow repetitive in its final act. Instead of trying to convey a message about vigilante justice, 4x4 would have been better served starting with its premise and adding some imagination to it.