"When a crime goes unpunished the world gets darker," says a character in the third of José Luis Garci's noir films exploring the hard-boiled life of Germán Areta (a suitably tough Carlos Santos). His latest case involves a hard-partying tailor with a penchant for high-stakes poker. The tailor's death was ruled a suicide, but his former lover suspects murder. The victim borrowed money from many people, paying them back by taking out insurance policies and naming them as beneficiaries. Thus, many people had reason to want the tailor dead and Areta has many people to investigate. Which he does, weaving inexorably through a gorgeously-rendered black-and-white landscape filled with sinewy cigarette smoke. While the detective drops references to F. Scott Fitzgerald and his works, the film pays homage to many Hollywood noir classics. Areta sums up the job of a private investigator as simply needing "patience and good shoes."—Dave Nuttycombe