Thanks for the memories!

Great Film overall

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

A hand grenade of a film from one of the truly dark moments in 20th century Spanish history but Salvador goes way beyond a bio-pic. For me the finest moment in the movie was when his guard reads the letter he had written to his father and in those words he sees that his prisoner is a man of flesh and blood capable of feelings and consciousness.What the movie really is about is the inhumanity of capital punishment and how it is used as a political tool, a tool of vengeance which is something that any modern judicial system must avoid at all cost. The garrote device used in the execution is just about the most horrible thing I've ever seen. I am 100% positive that he couldn't have been breathing or alive at the end. This type of strangulation results in death in seconds. Brilliant acting all around and I completely believed every second of the story. It all seems like so long ago but it happened in my lifetime. In Spanish and Catalan. My Catalan is lousy as no one speaks it here. I learn more Catalan in a week in Barcelona than I do all year here in Valencia.On a negative note the last 20 minutes of the film dragged on way too long.

In 1974 the young anarchistic bank-robber Salvador Puig Antich is executed after spending some time in jail. His death starts a period of unrest in Spain, at that time still ruled by the dictator Franco. That unrest is the beginning of democracy in Spain.This film plays the last months in the life of Salvador. It gives a short insight into his life, his why and what and the choices he makes. It then rolls on to his time in jail and all that follows.Biographic pictures like this one stand or fall with the capability of the actors to play their real life counterparts convincingly. This film stands. It does a very good job at dramatizing the actual events and left me with a giant lump in my throat.9 out of 10 accidental heroes.

i can't help wondering what the point of this film pamphlet was. it seemed to veer towards naive heroism in the beginning and at the end again, meanwhile completely neglecting a discussion of what set these people apart from other 'normal' terrorists. and then we get a subplot of the last death penalty dealt in Spain with this kid who of course doesn't deserve to be murdered at the hands of the state, but who does really. it fails on this level as well as a level of human relationship, using the story of the guard merely to make a point of how the revolution lives on. so i felt really ambiguous and detached from the film, which seemed so uncommitted to an involved and deep discussion of its story.

I just saw the movie tonight at Club Coliseum in Barcelona, and it was fantastic to see how people resisted the dictatorship until the end of Franco's days.If it wouldn't be for people like Salvador Puig Antich, we wouldn't have democracy until 10 years later, I think he was a real hero that fought for democracy.The last scene of Salvador Puig dying in "El Garrote Vil" is very hard, I cant believe it happened in my country in 1974. Daniel Brühl is a great actor, like he demonstrated in Good Bye Lenin, I think that being trilingual helps him a lot.Go and see this movie now.