We begin with a completely pointless and unmotivated massacre. While trying to tie up loose ends in the crime, we watch the cop following people and walking around a lot-not exactly an action-packed thriller. The pacing is nonexistent after the initial paroxysm of violence. A parallel investigation begins to uncover a sinister terrorist plot, that very coincidentally, ties in with the initial mass murder.
There are so many scenes of just watching nothing happen: the cop having a quick cubata in a bar, someone walking through the metro or down a street while the cop tails him. It's these dead areas of the film that sink it. The dialogue in parts is quite good. The scene when Santos in interrogated by the señoría (can't remember the title of the woman investigator) was excellent and showed a lot about his character as a tough guy not at all intimidated by whatever evidence she thinks she has against him.
With just a little bit of doing the writer could have made the initial murders less pointless and more related to the terrorism plot. It would have made a lot more sense, and this could have been an excellent movie.
The claims that this film is somehow racist because it portrays Muslim men as terrorists is simply absurd. The fact that the Spanish father is concerned about the well-being of his daughter who married a Muslim man and now she goes around covered up like a nun isn't some sort of outlandish fiction. It happens all the time. Muslim culture towards the treatment of women goes completely against the values we have fought for in the West.