4x4 is a 2019 Spanish-language crime thriller film based on actual events[1][2] by Mariano Cohn from a screenplay he co-wrote with Gastón Duprat.
Produced by the latter, the film, an Argentine-Spanish co-production, stars Peter Lanzani as Ciro, a criminal who breaks into a 4x4 SUV, owned by an obstetrician medic Enrique Ferrari (Dady Brieva), in order to steal the car stereo.
Ciro (Peter Lanzani) is walking in a neighborhood in Buenos Aires when he sees an SUV model car that catches his interest.
He frantically tries to get out, ripping the door panels off but cuts his arm when reaching for the lock mechanism, the floor having reinforced steel, and when he tries his gun to shoot at the front windshield the bullet bounces off and the ricochet hits him in the thigh.
He sees a woman fixing her makeup using the car door window but when Ciro screams for help, she does not hear him.
Eventually, he becomes weaker and delirious and talks about how the world is run by the rich, and how the poor are trampled by them, saying he won't obey their rules which is why he steals like his father and grandfather before him and won't obey the rules even if a gun was pointed at his head.
Ciro finds it and fills his empty bottle, but instead of rationing the water, his dehydration causes him to gorge on it completely.
Enrique calls the next day and says he has visited Ciro’s home seeing his wife Irina and his son Lionel.
Suffering from his injuries, he limps to a gas station where he takes bottles of water and a hamburger to eat.
A police officer intervenes and the situation escalates to a public standoff with Enrique holding Ciro hostage.
Ciro looks on sad-faced in the back of a police car finally having been freed from captivity but now has been arrested for his mistake.
The development of the film began when Cohn was watching TV and found a news about a thief that got trapped in a car he tried to steal in Brazil,[1][2] and later in Córdoba, Argentina to Roberto Desumvila.
[7][8] As per usual in their filmography, Duprat and Cohn read the script with people they knew were alien to the film industry for output.
[8][9] While both Brandoni and Lanzani agreed with the vision the director had,[10][11][12] Brieva thought more of the film as the depiction of the alienation both seniors and the lower class citizens suffer in the system and society.
[8] Peter Lanzani used Colin Farrell and Ryan Reynolds' performances in Phone Booth and Buried as acting reference.