My Review of "Orígenes secretos aka.Unknown Origins"

Orígenes secretos aka. Unknown Origins is a Spanish movie that seems smarter than your usual superhero movie. They have a ton of different geek references that I'm sure everyone into pop culture can appreciate. I'm not sure everyone will get this movie because of this though. Fortunately I did know all of the references that they were talking about in this movie and I started to realize that a lot of pop culture really is pop culture. It's known throughout the world regardless of your country of origin.

This movie starts off with the main character David. He's a new cop that has recently been transferred to the Madrid police department. He's partnered up with Cosme, a cop that's just about to retire but he's got a geeky son named Jorge.

Jorge is nothing like his father. He's a lazy and works at a comic book store. All of his knowledge is devoted to geek culture. No one really sees how his wealth of geek culture knowledge will benefit anyone.

David and Cosme are assigned to a case that seems really odd. The guy that was murdered used to be a really skinny scientist and he looks like he's got tons of muscles. Even crazier his skin is all gray. It's super weird but they find some odd clues as well that relate to comic books.

Neither David nor Cosme recognize the comic book references of the case. That is until there is another murder that also has some comic book relations. Jorge somehow stumbles upon one of the images of the cases and mentions that it resembles a comic book origin story. Cosme recognizes that his son might be the ticket to cracking the case.

The problem is that Cosme is retiring. What he does before he retires is teams up David with his son Jorge to solve the case. David is of course apprehensive of the idea. As the movie progresses he quickly notices that he does need Jorge to solve the mystery.

As the movie progresses we learn more about the odd couple of David and Jorge. It becomes your typical buddy cop flick with a little superhero twist. It works because the two have good chemistry with one another and Jorge is a very likable character.

I like the fact that they use comic book references of real comic books that we're all accustomed to like Spider-Man, Iron-Man, Bat-Man and so many others. We're all aware of these references because there are countless movies of all the pop culture references that they make. I think for the most part people will understand 90% of the references that they are making. There will be the odd person that won't understand because they genuinely haven't seen any superhero movie. This is not a movie for them. They'll be totally lost throughout the movie.

Still the references are done quite cleverly. Many people that are into comic book movies and I'm sure there are many will probably like this film. I'm actually shocked they were allowed to use a lot of the references that they did. I would have thought that big companies would stop them from using these references. Then again they may have gotten away with it since it's a Spanish film from Spain.

I was also surprised that all of the references of the movie had to do with American comic book and pop cultural references. I understand that pop culture means popular culture but I didn't think that it was actually popular culture around the world. It's kind of cool to know that all of the comic book references I know will be understood all the way in Spain. They watch all the same things as we do over here.

Overall, I really liked this movie. I would recommend it to a lot of my geeky friends as well. I thought the writing was pretty smart. It all makes sense in the end when you watch it. I have to give this movie an 8 out of 10. Those that are into comic book culture should check this out because it's pretty funny and clever at the same time.