Worst movie I saw in months. Theatrical settings, extremely painful bad acting, ripping-of of American movie clichés, terrible soundtrack and a script that seemed to be written by a 15 year old.The movie itself is a waste of time. Sound effects seem edited from other movies. I have no idea what the budget was for this flick, but whatever it was I assure you: it looks a very very low budget. Acting seems like amateur local groups. Even the camera work is bad.A tip for Portuguese directors: Showing breasts IS NOT the way to sell a movie!

It's hard to feel more sad with a film than what i am with this. I wanted so much that this was at least watchable, but i really wish that it could grasp the dimension of the literature that supports it. This is a terribly blind film, which i won't forget, for the worst reasons.Dinis Machado was a remarkable man. A man who lived and, incidentally, wrote. He was intelligent and his writings, besides Molero, always fill the gaps they are supposed to fill. He knew that detective stories, and noir films, are about how you build the story, not about the story itself. We shouldn't care (and we don't) about characters in a noir film besides the role they play in the narrative. They are abstract beings, there to serve a purpose, outside of their existence as characters. How happy i am when i read Machado, how well and ironically he knew that it was indifferent that he signed McShade or Donald the Duck. How well he distinguished between the bones and the flesh.Now, if any other guy was involved in this dreadful project, i wouldn't mind too much. I am used to the common inability to transport the deepness of certain writers to the medium of cinema, in fact that's quite a remarkable achievement when it is well done. But it embarrasses me as a viewer to see the remarkable Nicolau Breyner fail totally in this task. He is a man who understands acting in cinema as only a very restrict group of people in Portugal does. He clearly doesn't understand direction, he clearly doesn't control the big arch of the narrative dynamic, and the proof is that the very few watchable moments in this mess are centered around tiny pieces of good performances (topped by his own). He builds a place for his own character to show as the neglected mind, a man who had to live on aesthetics to secretly enjoy his own ethics. How close that is to the life of many Portuguese good actors. Not everything is a waste though, and i'm glad that Cláudia Vieira turned out to be nice, without being an actress. She might do well in a good project.The film is based in a story based in Don Quijote. This book is a monument, Dinis Machado understood it, as well as many generations of writers who rooted their writing on what Cervantes materialized. Borges certainly did and so did Cortázar - despite Machado is more connected to the first, and find him much more close to the second. Anyway, Borges's ideas of writing about writing (lead to infinite proportions), stories about storytelling are the waters where Machado successfully made his dives. That's where the memories of this hit-man would fit, that's the symbolic importance of the antique in this film. It's not only about a story, it's about the stories it is about. Think about it. It's not only the aesthetics of the story that is at question. Fundamentally, this has to do with the ethics and meanings of storytelling. Georgios Thanatos talks about it, it's one of the only pieces of dialogue which actually contemplates anything that matters in this stew of war sick reminiscences, skin waste and useless killings. How could Nicolau Breyner miss it? Any Portuguese average spectator will dismiss this commentary as useless, pseudo intellectual and will stand for that position based on the fact that i am evaluating a piece of entertainment as if it was a "serious" piece of film-making. Well, as an advance, before you vote "no" in IMDb, i have to say that i believe there's no entertainment without hidden serious thinking behind it. Now vote No.Incidentally, last Octobre i was outside the country and didn't realize that Dinis Machado passed away in that month. I only found out reading about this film. Double sadness. He was around, now he's not. This is a sad day in my film watching life.My opinion: 1/5 http://www.7olhares.wordpress.com

Contrato has a lot of potential, unfortunately the film is a victim of his own amateurism.As far as Portuguese cinema goes this is definitely a step forward but we can't seem to be able to shake some clichés. Pedro lima plays Peter Mcshade, a hit-man with a very strong sense of ethics that finds himself involved in a conspiracy. The plot is actually quite interesting and you get drawn into it as the story builds up and there's also a nice little plot twist.So, where does the movie fail? Well, for starters, sometimes it doesn't come trough as very believable, specially when the characters speak English...its a poor attempt to make the film a bit more mainstream. Plus, in order to give some swagger to the characters the writers decided to put the actors swearing every two lines...and this does nothing for the movie but to emphasize the amateurism. All in all this is a weak movie but two thumbs up for the effort and good performance by Pedro Lima.6/10

"Oh, I can tell what they tried to do here, but didn't work." This is what you will be thinking every minute of this film. Its probably very low budget but thats no excuse for the spelling and grammatical mistakes when they speak or write in English. This could have been a good Austin Powers type Spoof, but takes itself seriously which is not working. However there are amusing moments with Vitor Norte, and the bald guy whatever his name was. Was funny to see the guy from "Mano", playing a surprisingly convincing bad guy, and Nicolau Breyner's undeniably great acting gives some of the film a bit of credibility.All in all not worth 5 euros to watch but better than sitting at home when you've exhausted all the other films.