Spanish Film Festival (12) - Barrie Pattison rounds out his selection with a comedy, HEROES WANTED

This just about closes out my Spanish film event experience. I've gotten thoroughly sick of the repeating pre-show ads. with Sebastian Artois' brewery and of Tina and Ross and their extroverted olives but I wasn't game to wait to climb over the settled customers as the movies started. That would mean missing the trailers which were my best source of information.

I am sorry to miss Incerta Gloria/Uncertain Glory the new film by the director of the exceptional Pa Negra but Queen of Spain and Kiki look like getting runs at popular prices (we'll see), and the musical documentaries are for someone else.

Finally Cuerpo de élite/Heroes Wanted  by TV director Joaquín Mazón proved to be the ideal movie to rile up all those traditional film festival adherents who are snotty about these events.

On the streets of Madrid, moped riding traffic cop Miki Esparbé (The One Eyed King) even tickets the attractive girl who comes onto him. The car of Minister for the Interior Carlos Areces (the lead in de la Iglesia’s Ballad for a Sad Trumpet) is parked illegally but Esparbé wants one law for all so they drive over him and it makes the papers.

Esparbé is told that his devotion to duty has made him a candidate for the new elite squad being fast recruited to replace the lot wiped out in a Gibraltar shoot- out. He finds himself in the company of a team drawn from different Spanish regions, including winning Andalusian Signorita Maria Léon who only had the choice of being a whore or joining the Guardia Civil there.

Think Police Academy with better production values.

There are gay jokes, gross-outs and James Bond burlesques in the search for the A-bomb Franco stole from the crashed US plane at Palomares. It's even quite involving when Esparbé rallies the dispirited team, followed by the unknowing New Year's crowd wowed by the fireworks display that nearly got to be Madrid going up in a flash.

TV Director Mazón and Léon did a series together. The cast are winning and the film-making spot on so we can forgive Heroes Wanted for all those jokes that misfire. You don't often see these sub-titled.