Unit 7

General description & themes

This atmospheric piece is set in Seville, Andalucía in the four years leading up to the 1992 Universal Exposition of Seville. It dramatizes the social changes experienced by the city in a major "before" and "after" the World Expo, honing in on the process of cleaning up the city, eliminating the drug dealing from the streets in preparation for the World Expo, from the point of view of four (and particularly two) police officers comprising the (ficticious) Unit 7, renowned for their exaggeratedly elevated drug bust rate.

The film discusses the concept of the end justifying the means, focusing on themes of corruption, police violence, the psychology behind the figures carrying it out, and the politics (embodied by the police chief and unseen politicians) giving them carte blanche to do so, while washing their hands of the dirty deeds, condemning their actions when scandals break and condoning them when major drug busts are successful. It also describes life in some of the (formerly) more sordid neighborhoods or slums of Seville, as well as the sense of community displayed by some of their inhabitants when they decide to fight back against. All of this is portrayed with the backdrop of the ginormous construction work being undertaken to build the World Expo grounds on the outskirts of the city, shown as an enormous, bulldozed wasteland with no construction ever being seen in action but rather idle machinery and only marginally built bridges and buildings.

It shows the police officers as people, where it is not so clear where right ends and wrong begins, people who are being both exceedingly brutal, and yet sometimes expressing great tenderness or love, and it shows how the group of four feeds from one another in an escalation of violence in the name of eliminating the drug scourge. The director states that the movie could also be seen as "the rise and fall of a band of gangsters, only our gangsters are on this side of the law."

Plot

Unit 7 has a tough assignment: to clean the most dangerous drug trafficking networks out of the city and bring an end to the corrosive power that has taken hold of the streets. A detail of four, the unit is led by Ángel (Mario Casas), a young officer aspiring to the rank of detective, and Rafael (Antonio de la Torre), a violent, arrogant, yet efficient cop.

But unit 7's modus operandi is slipping outside the bounds of the law through their use of violence, coercion, lies and half-truths. For them, anything goes.

As they gain ground in their mission, the two officers head in opposite directions. Angel takes the path of ambition and police excess while Rafael will begin to change as a result of his feelings for beautiful, enigmatic Lucia.

Cast

Trivia

The director, Alberto Rodríguez, and his co-script-writer, Rafael Cobos, as well as one of the producers (Gervasio Iglesias), are from Seville, and one can sense that "insider look" throughout the film. Some of the actors are also from Andalusia, also contributing authenticity.

Although the film is a fictional creation, it does recreate or reflect an era. The general process, whether violent or not, of cleaning up the streets in preparation for Seville Expo '92 mirrors the process occurring in Barcelona at around the same time in preparation for the Barcelona Olympics of 1992, where marginal neighborhoods such as the Raval, the Old City in general, Can Tunis and La Mina were cleaned up, whereas in Barcelona, clean-up and face-life operations also included (often violently) dislodging or evicting squatters from abandoned factories, old army barracks and all sorts of unused buildings throughout the city.