El Crack (English: The Crack) is a 1981 Spanish film written and directed by José Luis Garci, starring Alfredo Landa. The plot was inspired by the novels written by Dashiell Hammett, to whom the film is dedicated. It evokes the film noirs made in Hollywood in the 1930s.
Germán Areta, a 43-year-old private detective, spent 12 years at the FBI and now has an office working as a private detective devoting himself to solving cases. One day, Francisco Medina, a mysterious man comes to German's office and gives the commission of finding his daughter, Isabel, a 17-year-old girl, of which he does not know her whereabouts. The only reference is a boyfriend who took the girl and now works in radio. Germán comes in contact with him and learns that she became pregnant and the father forced her to have an abortion in London, then lost her trail.
In his spare time, Germán goes out with Carmen, a nurse who has a four-year-old daughter, Maite, born from a relationship with a married man. The detective has been fond of the little girl, he takes her to school and plays with her. They begin to pressure the detective through various channels to stop investigating the case of Medina's daughter
(This is information generated from a Wikipedia article, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.)