INTUITION : Wednesday 3rd June 2020.

In these very trying and testing times for us all that has seen many cinema's, Odeon's, and movie theatres around the world close their doors for the foreseeable future because of the escalating threat of the COVID-19 Coronavirus taking an ever increasing hold on the world at large, many film and television productions halted in their tracks indefinitely, and new film releases pushed back to some future date when some sense of movie going normalcy is expected to resume, I have, needless to say, had to adapt to this new world order. And so with my usual Reviews of the latest cinematic releases being curtailed, instead I will post my Review of the latest release movies showing on Netflix until such time as the regular outing to my local multiplex or independent theatre can be reinstated.

In the last few weeks then, a number of new feature films have landed at Netflix - of which I review as below 'Intuition' which went live on the streaming service on 28th May and which I saw from the comfort of my own sofa at home on Wednesday 3rd June.

'INTUITION' ('LA CORAZONADA' in Spanish) is an Argentinian Netflix original crime thriller film overdubbed into English that is Directed and Written by Alejandro Montiel and is the prequel to the 2018 film 'Perdida', also Written and Directed by Montiel, which sees Luisana Lopilato reprise her role as Manuela 'Pipa' Pelari. The film has garnered mostly negative reactions from Critics.

Our film opens up with a bunch of young lads shooting hoops somewhere on the outskirts of Buenos Aires late one evening. One young man rocks up on his bicycle, shoots a few hoops, and the group disperse all going their separate ways. The camera stays with the young man back on his bike until he is knocked off his bike by a passing car at an intersection, slams into the windscreen smashing it, and lands in a crumpled heap in front of the car, dead! Elsewhere, rookie cop Pipa Pelari (Luisana Lopilato) and her commanding Officer, Detective Francisco Juanez (Joaquin Furriel) are leading a small squad into a woodland in search of two young girls who had been abducted by some serial offender. Juanez saves one of the girls, but is too late in rescuing the other, but the alleged perpetrator is shot and killed by Juanez in the process. All of this, has absolutely nothing to do with the remaining film, other than introduce us to the two main aforementioned characters.

Meanwhile, we then cut to a hospital in which Juanez is sat on the edge of a hospital bed being administered some drugs by an acquaintance doctor friend of his for some undisclosed heart condition he seems to be suffering from. He doesn't want to make a fuss! His phone keeps ringing with several messages left for him to attend a crime scene, to which he arrives late with no clear explanation as to why. At that crime scene is a dead 20 year old woman lying on her bed, Gloriana, who has suffered multiple stab wounds to the neck. Also in attendance is Pelari, another cop named Ordonez and a forensics specialist.

Fairly soon, the accusations point towards Gloriana's best friend Minerva, who offers up no alibi, and following five minutes of questioning confesses to the murder. It turns out that the night before the pair of girls were seen in a club together, and whilst Gloriana seems to have had zero emotional intelligence and zero social skills she was extremely adept at pissing off anyone and everyone she came into contact with, including Minerva with whom she had a huge bust up when they got home to their shared apartment. Juanez is however, skeptical over Minerva's confession, and so asks Pelari to question her on the sly without her lawyer present. Minerva still maintains she is guilty, despite forensics saying that the killer was right handed when Minerva is left handed, plus other inconsistencies in her story.

Juanez and Pelari go back to the scene of the crime and discover that the lock to a door to an external courtyard was broken - a fact overlooked by forensics meaning that anyone could have easily gained entry by scaling up/down a wall to a neighbouring property. Juanez makes the fairly easy climb up the wall and discovers a bloody fingerprint on the top of the wall. He climbs down the other side into the neighbouring property and finds a bloodied knife in between the plant pots. This means that the Detective can get a search warrant, which reveals that Gloriana's neighbour, a young lad named Mauro, who has several mental health issues could ease his way down the wall and secretly spy on the girls.

With all this going on, Pelari is also tasked with covertly investigating Juanez, whom the DA believes killed Galvan (the young lad seen at the start of the film knocked off his bike and killed), because Galvan shot and killed Juanez wife a few years ago in a bungled convenience store robbery, and who was released from prison just two weeks before. So Juanez has the motive, and the opportunity it seems. But, Pelari's investigations with the doctor at the hospital reveal that he has a heart condition which coupled with CCTV footage from the entrance to the hospital at the same time that Galvan was killed, in which we see Juanez stumbling inside, seems to clear him of any wrong doing.

The DA still has an axe to grind with Juanez and asks another cop, Fito, to question the doctor at the hospital again, but not to mention anything to Pelari. The next morning Juanez's doctor called him to advise that a female cop had been snooping around asking him questions.

In the meantime, Mauro's phone is found to contain multiple images of Minerva, proving that he was secretly stalking her. Mauro has however, been held in a psychiatric ward of a hospital from which he has escaped, and makes his way to Minerva's apartment while she is packing up her belongings ready to leave once and for all. He sneaks through the apartment although Minerva has caught his reflection in a mirror, and she seeks to hide. Coming face to face, Minerva stabs Mauro with  pair of scissors deep into his stomach just a Pelari arrives at the window, but is unable to gain entry. Mauro turns around and pulls the scissors from his wound, and as a consequence bleeds out collapsing on the floor, dead!

Fito by this time has come to the same conclusion as Pelari over Juanez hospital alibi and confirmed back to the DA that Juanez must be innocent because of the CCTV footage seen, which he has down loaded to his laptop and e-mailed. Fito however, is attacked by a couple of masked assailants, beaten up and his laptop stolen. Minerva's grandmother (her principle caregiver since Minerva is an orphan we have since learned), gives Juanez a jewelled owl ornament which was a family heirloom and one of two - the other belonging to Minerva, as a heartfelt thanks for clearing her granddaughters name. Before leaving Juanez's office Pelari aks them a couple of other questions having seen Minerva perform some acts with her right hand, including stabbing Mauro. In flashback, we see Gloriana telling Minerva to pack her things and move out of her apartment, because she's a stupid orphan, and how she stole Minerva's owl and has since sold it. Mightily pissed off, Minerva takes a kitchen knife and stabs Gloriana in the neck three times while she sleeps. Minerva then showers, and waits a couple of hours until its time to leave by her usual routine, but not before saying a final farewell to the corpse of her one friend and turning over the lifeless body to reveal her precious owl which had left an imprint on Gloriana's shoulder - providing further evidence to the hitherto unsolved mystery of the strange imprint.

Pelari subsequnetly is watching further CCTV footage from the night at the hospital. In seeing a different camera angle Juanez is seen getting out of a red car - the same red car as at the scene of Galvan's death at the start of the film. So it appears that Juanez sent the two assailants to mug Fito to gain his laptop to prevent the incriminating evidence getting out. Galvan's older brother Zorro who has sworn to his mother that he will take out vengeance on Galvan's killer, meets with the DA in his office where he advises that its was Juanez who killed Galvan, and that he has set up a meeting in an hours time down by the docks, in which Zorro can ambush Juanez and off him once and for all.

It seems all along that Zorro has been blackmailing the DA over a series of incriminating photos that he has of the DA in various compromising positions with a bevy of ladies. Zorro says that he'll hand over the digital copies once Juanez is dead. Pelari had previously planted a tracking device to the underside of Juanez car, and is able to locate his vehicle down by the docks. She arrives and confronts Juanez, accusing him of murdering Galvan. Juanez invites Pelari to stay hidden and to listen to what unfolds.

Zorro and one of his henchmen arrive on motorbikes looking menacing. They pull guns on Juanez who invites Zorro to hand over the digital file having stated that he has his man Ordonez on the roof on a nearby building with his assault rifle trained on Zorro's head, and that he is a very good shot. Zorro hands over the memory stick which Juanez throws into the harbour. A shoot out takes place in which Ordonez shoots the henchman clean through the skull, while Zorro and Juanez shoot each other. Pelari and Ordonez arrive on the scene as Pelari attends to Juanez who was wearing a bullet proof vest but has suffered a heart attack. As Ordonez calls for back up he is shot dead by Zorro, who in turn is shot dead by Pelari.

Subsequently Pelari and a heavily bruised Fito are seen in the hospital overlooking an unconscious Juanez. Fito remarks that they still don't know who owned or the whereabouts of the red car. A mysterious woman arrives at the hospital to be at Juanez bedside - his mother-in-law - who Pelari had seen previously but dismissed her appearance at Galvan's funeral as a passerby, and one day greeting Juanez outside his apartment. A few days later Pelari breaks into the house of the mother-in-law and gains entry through the double garage. There under a dust sheet is the red car with a broken windscreen, skid marks on the bonnet, and a smashed headlamp. It seems that Juanez was helping his mother-in-law cover up for the death of Galvan all along. As Pelari is seen walking down the street away from the house, up walks the mother-in-law and enters. Pelari turns around to see her disappear inside, and then keeps on walking.

'Intuition' is a pedestrian, nondescript, generic by the numbers crime story that we have all seen hundreds of times already, and offers up nothing new other than our rookie cop tasked with trying to solve three mysteries for the price of one - who killed Gloriana, who killed Galvan, and is her boss as innocent as he claims to be and what is he hiding? The characters are all largely one dimensional who mooch around nonchalantly with sullen expressions dressed in designer threads making out that they are better than everybody else in the department. As busy as the storyline is, it limps to a predictable and underwhelming finale that sees Pelari offer nothing more than a sideways glance and a shrug at the perpetrator of Galvan's death, Minerva carted off behind bars after fessing up to her crime for the second time, and Juanez comatose in a hospital bed albeit his name cleared - well I guess two outta three ain't bad! The production values are solid enough, but the plot tries to cram in all the cliched detective investigative stories into a cohesive narrative and fails in the process that even die hard fans of the genre are likely to baulk at.

'Intuition' merits two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-