Chad Shiira She's a terrible singer, the bodyguard's niece, but it's the bodyguard's birthday, and this lamentable frog-voiced serenade is all he's got. Day in, day out, the bodyguard is invisible, a corporeal ghost who's unacknowledged by his boss if there's no breech in security. Sometimes he's hard to pick out in a crowded room. Even the camera is bored with Rueben(Julio Chavez). When the bodyguard wanders out of frame, the camera doesn't follow him. In other scenes, "La Custodian" demonstrates Rueben's lowly position within his employer's envoy through the filmmaker's meticulous compositions of assembled people, in which our protagonist doesn't occupy the center of the, excuse me, but I've got to use this term, mis-en-scene. In elevators loaded up to maximum capacity, in luncheon counters at crowded diners, even in his own bathroom while he shaves, Rueben is obscured by the animate and the inanimate. While waiting for his employer, Rueben smokes a cigarette behind a telephone pole. You can't see him. People can't see him. You see smoke, and where there's smoke, there's a fire. So on his birthday, a day when finally Rueben gets to be the center of attention, the song that's being performed in his honor takes on a particular significance. The birthday tribute validates him. It's no small exaggeration that Rueben's life depends on his niece finishing her song, down to the final missed note. But the restaurant owner instructs the waiters to shut down the karaoke machine. It's bad for business. The niece is awful. Rueben explodes. The performance was a bittersweet experience at best; a mediocre song for a mediocre life, but to add insult to injury, the food service workers deny him this tiny victory. It's the film's turning point.When Rueben visits a supply shop, he purchases a gun, but a bullet-proof vest, as well, which neutralizes our perception that he's on the offensive. Besides, the gun is a tool of the trade. Although we're not shocked, the pop of the pistol gives off a palpable jolt to the senses when the bodyguard finally turns on his employer. The man he escorts to the bathroom. The man Rueben watches eat lunch at a restaurant while he waits outside in the car. The man whose life Rueben is supposed to protect. The man who never really sees Rueben. As a final irony, in the final seconds of the Minister of Planning's life, Rueben remained invisible to his boss to the very end. Artemio(Osmar Nunez) never saw it coming. He was unconscious at the time.

alomino222 Another Argentinian film that copies everything done before regarding shots and framing. Is like they all come from a film school that shows to the pupils films from the sixties and then, all of them copy here and there a shot. Amazing!. The real Argentinian cinema is Sorin and Agresti, the rest just plays with the ignorance of local film critics and snob festivals. Do this director has something original to offer?? The film is a bore, pretentious in simplicity. The pathetic thing shows that the director just wanted to show how much can copy but have nothing to say, absolutely nothing more than try to jump the leap and become a Fassbinder or any master sadly forgotten. Wake up people, take a look to the old masters and stop being amaze about things that already exist long long time ago.

kosmasp I really tried to like this movie and as IMDb shows here, some others were more successful by doing so than me. Yes this movie has good ideas and yes it is a psychological study of a bodyguard ... you could say a documentary.And by being or feeling like a documentary it dries you up inside. In other words it gets boring. Why does it get boring? Because the work of a bodyguard is boring. I don't need 20 scenes that tell me, that the life of a bodyguard sucks ... 2 or 3 would've been enough! For me this movie was a waste of time and opportunities ... they could've either created some drama, but more importantly, they could've shortened the movie a lot! Better yet, they should have!

moimoichan6 A narrator with an omniscient and external point of view on a movie is called a heterodiegetic one. He can't participate to the story he tells, for he's not in it, but beside it. The great achievement of "El Custodio" is to adopt this heterodiegetic point of view, and to transform it into a real character, who is the center of the movie, his heart as well as its reason to to exist. But this original point of view also always stays out of the world he lives in, and is excluded from the story he's supposed to be the hero. That's why this movie, certainly the first absolutely heterodiegetic, gives like never the frightful feeling to always stand unseen and at the edge of the world when your work dooms you to the invisible and nonexistence.The movie is centered on Rubèn, a character unable to occupies the all space because of is function : he is the bodyguard of a Argentine minister, and for that, it seems that he doesn't have the right to exist independently. And the all bet of the movie is to keep this strange heterodiegetic point of view in a realistic way all along. The realism has here a double face : a documentary one and a subjective one. The first one means that we constantly fallow the character in his everyday life, in its absolute routine (fallow the minister, wait for him for hours, buy a new bulletproof vest, etc.). No need to say that this bodyguard doesn't have the life of Aaron Pierce (the bodyguard of President Palmer in "24") and doesn't risk his life everyday. The movie constantly avoid any action scene, because the reality of a bodyguard's life isn't full of action and tension, but full of waiting, humiliation and waist of time.The second realistic aspect of the movie is apparently in contradiction with this documentary aspect, but is far more important : it's a subjective realism. The all movie is always seen with Rubèn's eyes, and that's where it becomes interesting. You really have the feeling to experience a bodyguard's live, to see through his eyes and to understand his loneliness while watching this movie. This point of view is remarkably developed from the first frame (when you see the first ritual of a long list of rituals to come : Rubèn's shaving in the morning, then dressing with his bullet proof vest...) to the last (absolutely logical, but a little bit predictable), with some experimental cadres, reflections games on mirrors and building glasses and graphic and cold symmetrical constructions.The all movie is perfectly draft and carries with courage its original theme to its end. And if there's no action in it, the movie is always dense and tense, for the routine that the movie describes can be blown away at any moment. And the terrifying impression of becoming invisible to the very same people you work for and you're supposed to give your life to protect when your function tells you to, remains long after the screening.