O Capacete Dourado

Ah, that centuries-old story of two young people falling in love: if done right, the resulting film can be as poetic and beautiful as Before Sunrise; if done wrong... hell, too much crap to list. The Golden Helmet belongs to the second category.

What went awry? How could the film be so dull? It's got all the classic elements: a gang-related male protagonist, a "decent" female lead and an unlikely, inevitably tragic love affair blossoming between them. The script even provides a valid opposition to their bond: the girl's father, a high school principal whose hatred for the boy stems from the fact that it was the latter and his friends who put the man's wife in a hospital bed. How can such a tale fail to stir even the simplest of emotions?

Oh, wait, there is a good reason: the same story has been told countless times since the very birth of cinema, and eight times out of ten the outcome is a predictable, daft picture. The Golden Helmet is supposed to be different since it is, according to the director, based on real events. Oddly, that doesn't show: every scene in the movie screams "teen drama clichè" rather than "true story", especially the downright woeful first encounter, set by a river - plain stupid. It's textbook film-making, professionally executed. Too bad it's also incredibly boring.

Even worse than all that, though, is the "auteurish" open ending: what's the point of having that in a film with no plot?