A Movie Smart and With Heart: The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto De Sus Ojos)

It won the Oscar for best foreign film this year.

The Internet Movie Database lists it as a Crime, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Thriller.

This is accurate.

Humor is something else that is abundant throughout, but it's not a comedy.

The romance and the humor offset a dark story based around the solving of a gruesome murder. The darkness balances the yearning of a love story that is tender and true and so rare on a big screen, particularly for how much it has you wanting to see it work, wonder if it will work (I won't tell you). I never thought the phrase 'It'll have you rooting for X' in a movie could be taken sincerely (thought it was reserved for Sandra Bullock vehicles). It can when the main characters have this much humanity.

He's a man of great integrity. I fell in love with her.

Though not a true story, its filled with detail that makes the lives of these people, the place they work, their homes, the bars they hang out in all feel real, but yet its not so real as to be arty (in the incomprehensible or banal senses of the word). Thought made in Argentina, the movie still has that stuff of the mythic that Hollywood is so good at, the stuff that raises a narrative above the everyday, that magic stuff we wanted before we went to sleep as kids (and still want, no?)

"The Secret in Their Eyes" won't be in theatres (for those lucky enough to even have it in theatres close to home) much longer. It may not be a perfect movie, but it's well worth the price of admission.