Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Intuition’ on Netflix, a Generic Crime/Cop Drama from Argentina

Netflix movie Intuition (La Corazonada) is a prequel to the streamer’s 2018 original thriller Perdida, reuniting director Alejandro Montiel with star Luisana Lopilato, playing police detective Manuela “Pipa” Pelari. The first film came and went with a shrug or three, which is better than just a shrug, and also roughly the minimum requirement Netflix demands to greenlight a project. Unlike everything else in the world of audio-visual content, Intuition, despite being part of what I’m now dubbing the PIPA PELARI CINEMATIC UNIVERSE (PPCU), seems to stand well on its own as a story with a beginning and ending. But whether it’ll inspire anyone to watch Perdida and beg for 27 more PPCU movies remains to be seen.

INTUITION: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Somewhere on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, a young man plays basketball with friends at night, then hops on his bicycle and is intentionally hit by a car until he’s dead. Elsewhere on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, two 10-year-old girls are abductees of a serial creep. Pipa (Lopilato) is a rookie cop and Juanez (Joaquin Furriel) is her chief, and they’re leading a squad bent on capturing the creep; Juanez follows a trail through some dark but very stylishly lit woods and saves one of the girls. Elsewhere elsewhere on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Juanez stops at a hospital for a prescription and an injection. His cell phone keeps blowing up, because elsewhere elsewhere elsewhere on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, a young woman has been murdered, and he’s gotta investigate. Busy night on the outskirts of Buenos Aires!

There’s no rest for the mysterious and smoldering and possibly wicked cop. Possibly? Well, the guy on the bike is the same guy who killed Juanez’s wife when she witnessed a holdup; the guy got a manslaughter charge, spent two years behind bars and was barely out of the clink when he was killed. You can’t blame Juanez for being honked off, and some wonder if he was the perpetrator of the hit-and-run. Since Pipa is partnering with Juanez on the murder case, the local prosecutor, who may have a light trail of ooze behind him, or maybe it’s just the lighting in here, assigns her to look into Juanez’s potential guilt. Good thing this newb already had a movie made about her badass future self, or else she might not be up to the multitask.

With her all-black wardrobe and sullen expression, Pipa appears to be brooding at all times. About what, we haven’t a clue. But she seems to be one of the types we frequently see in movies: the at-all-hours workaholic cop who has a big fat zero in the personal life column. They usually have depressingly spartan apartments and refrigerators with two bottles of moldering condiments in them, although we never see where she lives or have much of an inkling of who she is between the ears. Anyhow, she and Juanez examine the body, ruffle through the crime scene and follow the case where it leads; meanwhile, she follows the side gig of snooping into his business. She sets up a bulletin board with some strings and photos on it, sniffs around the dead bicyclist’s family and sidesteps some political cop shit going on. You know the drill.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Intuition — generic-nonsense title, BTW — cops all its moves from every neo-noir, serial-killer, internal-affairs, murder-procedural movie ever made since 1990, blending them all into a bland paste that tastes absolutely noncommittal smeared atop a slice of Wonder bread.

Performance Worth Watching: Furriel tries to give Juanez something more than a wafer-thin characterization, but the screenplay routinely prevents him from being interesting.

Memorable Dialogue: Juanez psycho-profiles the killer from the opening sequence by giving inventory of what’s in the guy’s heart:  “Love… for god. He thinks he is the chosen one.”

Sex and Skin: Just the genre-requisite nude corpse on the autopsy slab.

Our Take: At the risk of sounding glibly dismissive, Intuition is boring and it sucks. If there’s one thing I learned watching this movie, it’s that glib dismissiveness is mostly uncalled for, but once in a while, it’s absolutely called for.

Save for the occasional lousy performance from the supporting cast, the dull dialogue, the mildly confusing editing, the flimsy posterboard characters, the generic twists, the wheezy two-hour run time and a gross inability to generate suspense, the movie is just fine. It’s slick in its production value and baseline-competent in its storytelling — and remarkably unentertaining. I watched it and can confirm that it was written, directed, produced, photographed, gripped, best-boyed and all the other things one needs to do to make a movie. If it was good, it would be good, and if it was bad, it might also be good. But Intuition merely is. It’s content to simply exist in a kind of catatonic state of watchableness that merely demands that its viewer also simply exist, seated in front of it, conscious or asleep, alive or dead. Doesn’t matter, because it won’t provoke a single physical or psychological reaction. It avoids things like specificity and imagination. Gird your expectations accordingly. Or don’t, I don’t care.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Intuition is the monotonous episode of CSI that you don’t turn off because you’re sitting on the remote and don’t feel like moving your ass to retrieve it.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Intuition on Netflix