It’s likely you’re already familiar, in passing at least, with the work of Juan José Campanella. The Argentinean director makes his living working in American television, with a diverse résumé that runs from quick-witted comedy (Strangers With Candy, 30 Rock) to formula dramas (Law & Order, House), presumably using the financial security and connections that work affords him to make films back in his native land. After seeing his latest, The Secret in Their Eyes, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film this year, one wonders if maybe it’s time for Campanella to quit the day job and start making movies full-time.

Perhaps it’s all those Law & Order episodes, but Campanella seems to have legal dramas and police procedurals in his blood. He knows this genre backwards and forwards, which allows him to skillfully maneuver through a complicated plot — taken from co-writer Eduardo Sacheri’s novel — that contains numerous twists and turns, none of which seem forced or cheap. He has a great and understated skill at setting moods and building tension, whether in a riveting and original spin on the old good-cop/bad-cop routine, or in the thrilling immediacy of the unedited and balletic camera work in a foot chase through a crowded soccer stadium.

He may have picked up some of this working in Hollywood, but here, set free from the strictures of network television, he takes standard genre elements — infighting lawyers, gruff bosses, lovably incompetent yet insightful sidekicks — and constructs a mystery of uncommon depth and complexity. A mystery that, like The Silence of the Lambs or Chinatown, can be enjoyed purely for the whodunit, but is even more rewarding for the personal journey it takes its investigators on to solve the riddle.