Mondays in the Sun (2002)

Excellent, smart action film.

Charming and brutal

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

"Los lunes al sol" premise may not be enough to some in order to make a great movie: a movie that just shows us the everyday lives of a group of unemployed. It's also a great tale of friendship, as we see how this group of friends stay together to overcome the difficulties that arise from the closure of the shipyards.The movie isn't political or tries to be confrontational; it's focus on the human lives involved make it a profoundly human story. The acting really helps in this aspect. It is natural and simple, but in a good way- we're dealing with a totally (but sadly) normal situation here. "Los lunes al sol" shows us that it's not needed a disaster or anything big to tell us a great story. It can be, instead, a simple one. Simple, but told and acted emotively. It may tend to be slow-paced sometimes, but it's a must see nonetheless, as this makes you thankful for what you have and for the ones around you.

How do you imagine the life of an unemployed without family, possession or future? Dull is certainly one of the answers, but this movie does the utmost of this basic story! It's a great achievement to tell something so boring without becoming itself dull and boring. At some points it is even funny and every minute is well done. Really intelligent script with great actors. Especially the actor of Santos! By far the best way to get a glimpse of a life nobody wants to have. It isn't a movie for everybody, because it isn't an easy popcorn movie. The presence of your mind is required but you will be certainly rewarded with an insight that you'll hopefully never experience.

This is the story of a group of former workers in a Spanish ship-building company and it has a gritty, realistic feel which doesn't necessarily make it great. Yes, it has it's funny moments and yes, it does capture the ennui and the growing hopelessness and impotence that unemployment, especially long-term unemployment, brings to the jobless, as well as the strains and stresses that it puts on those around them but it's all a bit too bleak and imagines itself to have a deeper running emotional relationship with the audience than is actually there. Perhaps something is lost in the translation in the English subtitles but for me this film was, a bit like Withnail & I, more a set of scenes than a whole, coherent movie and it lacks the same appeal. In ways, it is as much a story about growing older as it is about unemployment. I did feel that the characters weren't very fleshed out. We have very little of their past to go on and very little to say why they are the way they are. Maybe it's because the film is trying to play on it's own 'Siamese twin' metaphor and that it is a multi-faceted character which is the sum of all the characters' parts that we are supposed to look at, that the pride, the doubt, the anger, the quiet desperation and the persistence of spirit are in every one of these people and that if one falls, they all fall. It's possible that's what the makers went for but it's weak and tenuous in it's implementation and the metaphor is more for reference to the failure of the union strikes which preceded the end of their days in the shipyard. I'm quite a fan of foreign language films and Javier Bardem's last movie 'The Sea Inside' was one of the best that I've seen recently. However, this offering really didn't do much for me. Like I always seem to comment these days, the acting in the movie was excellently played but due to their lack of depth, these were more types than characters. If 'The Full Monty' was a light-hearted look at hope, inspiration and the pursuit of happiness and folly against a backdrop of unemployment then this is quite the opposite. This is more a look at the prison and the inmates of unemployment and in this movie, there are no great escapes!

I watch 'Mondays in the sun' last night and it impressed me really... Sorry guys but I usually prefer European-especially Mediterranean ones- movies much more than Hollywood productions... Like some of the others, there is a simple story there but very sincere and sensitive, that makes you feel deep inside...After watching any movie, I would like to feel the taste for some days...Sometimes you can easily forget what you have watched in several hours, but those kind of movies makes me feel something warm deep inside even it's dramatic athmosphere... Also the soundtrack is wonderful... For me it is a five-star production... Thanks so much for all who made it... (A+)