Twisty Spanish thriller Below Zero has become an unexpected overnight hit for Netflix, but what does the movie’s ending mean? Released in 2021, Below Zero is a grim and intense crime thriller whose twisty action recalls everything from John Carpenter’s classic siege thriller Assault On Precinct 13 to the underrated 2009 psychological thriller Law Abiding Citizen.
Below Zero tells the self-contained, unbelievably tense tale of Martin, a new prison guard who is given the difficult task of helping with a transfer of numerous dangerous prisoners on his first day. Naturally, things soon go wrong, with a mysterious figure interfering with the transfer, numerous opportunistic convicts attempting to escape in the ensuing chaos, and a dark mystery unraveling before the movie’s conflicted antihero.
Below Zero is uncompromising in everything from its tense action sequences to its unsparing depictions of gruesome violence, to the open-ended and daringly ambiguous morality of its protagonists. Almost the entire movie’s action takes place inside an armored vehicle used for transporting prisoners, every major cast member has at least some blood on their hands, and no one walks away from the dark drama clean. But what does the enigmatic ending of Below Zero represent, and what’s the point of the movie’s gruesome coda?
What Happens In Below Zero’s Ending
The opening and closing scenes of Below Zero are similar, with both of them featuring a vengeance-crazed older man beating a younger man almost to death. The rest of the movie fills in the blanks of his story, and the allegiances of most viewers will shift to the older man once the full story is clear. In the ending of Below Zero, most of the convicts are dead thanks to various accidents and mishaps that have occurred as the older man Miguel attempted to kidnap Nano, a young prisoner who is among their number. Martin confronts Miguel about his vendetta in an almost-empty ghost town and Miguel reveals that Nano raped and murdered his daughter.
With Miguel having killed Nano's accomplice in the opening scene, the surviving Clockwork Orange-style teen psycho Nano is now the only one who knows the location of his daughter's body. Martin initially stops Miguel from beating Nano to death, but when Nano reveals that he’s guilty and begins gloating, Martin severs his hand with a shotgun blast and threatens to kill him if he doesn’t divulge the body's location. Nano immediately does so, prompting relieved laughter from Miguel as police helicopters arrive on the scene. In the closing moments, Martin leaves his new job as a prison guard in disgust, horrified at how the judicial system failed Miguel and traumatized by the ordeal he’s been through.
The Ending's 'The Good The Bad and The Ugly' And 'Rio Bravo' References
The closing scenes of Below Zero feature a shootout in a ghost town wherein two formerly-at-odds, morally ambiguous characters team up to take down a far worse third figure. The scene plays out as a darker riff on The Good The Bad and The Ugly’s ending with Martin and Miguel torturing Nano instead of killing him so he will divulge the location of Soledad’s body. The reason for this reference is that Below Zero has a similar theme to Leone’s legendary spaghetti western, with both depicting two men side-stepping the rule of law but adhering to a moral code of their own.
Similarly, the final scene features an even more obvious western nod as a disgusted Martin quits his prison guard job (or is fired), clears out his things, and takes down a photo of his family in much the same manner that Gary Cooper’s legendary gunslinger throws his badge in the dirt at the close of Howard Hawk’s iconic High Noon. Again, the parallel being underlined is that, despite the best attempts of legal systems and institutions like prisons and courts to regulate society, the controversial ending instead sees Martin and Miguel end up serving justice in the classic wild west fashion by taking the law into their own hands (particularly when relative innocents like Gollum, Ramis, and Rei end up in prison, but monsters like Nano get off lightly).
Why Ramis (Probably) Survives
Unlikely as it seems, Ramis, the genial thief, seems to survive the entire ordeal of Below Zero by a combination of pluck, luck, and chance. He is stuck in subzero conditions and wet clothes, but he’s also the luckiest man alive by his estimate, so it’s fair to guess he likely lives. The reason he lives is that he and Martin understand one another and view each other as equals, the same reason that Miguel lets Martin live later instead of shooting him when he has the drop on him in the abandoned building near the end of Below Zero. Although they are on different sides of the law, the fact that Ramis is a likable Jack Sparrow-style gentleman thief instead of a murderer, his connection to Martin (he sang at his wedding), and his decision to save the drowning prison guard via mouth-to-mouth evidence that he is a good man, and one whose escape is karmically more than fair.
Why Martin Shoots Nano
Throughout the action of Below Zero, Martin has been measured and judicious in his application of force as he still believes the system will bring these prisoners to justice and treat them fairly. It’s why he doesn’t kill Miguel after sneaking up on him and stealing his gun, and it’s why he gives Nano the benefit of the doubt right up until the gormless criminal starts gloating about being guilty and facing no consequences, unaware that he's subject to action movie rules. That’s when Martin blasts Nano’s hand clean off to learn the location of Miguel’s daughter's body and ensure that the grieving dad gets some closure. He’s aware it is illegal and will likely cost him his job (and indeed, viewers can infer from the next scene that it likely did). But in the moment Martin, who previously believed that rules must be followed regardless of the situation, instead decides that doing the right thing is more important, and that the right thing is helping Miguel get closure.
What Below Zero's Ending Really Means
Like the recent Promising Young Woman, Below Zero’s ending implies that anything (up to and including death) is worth the price in search of revenge. The movie’s action sees Martin attempt to maintain law and order despite the rapidly deteriorating circumstances, while the ending sees him dismiss the rules and aid Miguel in his torture of Nano because he accepts that the law useless in his case. Below Zero has a glib view of the efficacy of prisons and courts in handling crime, and returns to the familiar tropes of classic westerns to hand out a more visceral and effective brand of justice.