Long Dark Night (2004)

Wow! Such a good movie.

Fantastic!

Excellent but underrated film

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Well, there was another great Croatian movie with a similar topic that is by far better - it is "Sokol ga nije volio" by Fabijan Sovagovic. In that movie, characters are much deeper, more developed and much more convincing. This movie ("Duga mracna noc") is also problematic from historical point of view, and, of course yes, is highly influenced by "state" propaganda, never mind that the plot is placed 60-70 years ago. During WWII Croatia was NOT occupied by Nazi-Germans, it was Nazi ally and with their own Nazi Ustasha regime there was no need (or no place actually) for punishment of Croatian villagers (burning scene) by German soldiers, they had their own to do such things and the victims were Serbian villages. Serbs were the vast majority of partisan forces during the war. There is also one illogical thing about insignia - partisans wore red star as non-national, international and ideological sign. Here, partisans of German nationality wore German flag with red star? Second part of movie (after the war) is better, but still soft and underdeveloped. All in all, if you want to lose 3 hours of your life to see how thing didn't take place actually, be my guest.

Contrary to one of the previous comments, this movie hasn't got anything to do with propaganda. Its main character Iva (Goran Visnjic) is an apolitical moralist who has problems with followers of all tyrannic ideologies that have influenced his country short time before, during, and short time after the Second World War: Partisans, Ustase, Nazis and Communists, and likes none of them. More modern political issues weren't touched by this movie at all, and therefore it can't have anything to do with propaganda. It shows certain kinds of terrible things that happened to ordinary people in every war in history from a perfectly human and apolitical perspective. It doesn't incite either national, ideological, or religious hate. In my opinion, this is one of the best movies ever made in Croatia. Even though Croatia makes quite a small amount of movies per year, and even though most of them aren't very good, I believe this movie can without second thoughts be said to be better than any average movie filmed in, say, Hollywood.As I said, this movie is an anti-war movie about the madness and awfulness of hate, murder, and sorrow bred by the war and their influence on lives of ordinary people. Iva has a normal, happy life until the Nazi regime takes over the government of Croatia. He saves the life of his Jewish friend, and he is forced to join the Partisans (the first antifascist movement on the European soil) because Gestapo is after him. The former Partisans come to power after the War and set Communism as the country's ideology. New government's politics are causing misfortune to the common people, and Iva frequently has to use his influence as a former Partisan colonel to save his friends from the regime. When he, during a family dinner, calls Yugoslav president Tito 'A selfish egocentric and a world-class snob', his brother-in-law, an officer of the secret police, has him imprisoned as a political prisoner. This leads to a whole series of unfortunate events, including the suicide of his wife, and Iva spending four years in Yugoslavia's most notorious prison. After the film's merry beginning, and its depressing main part, comes an ending filled with optimism. Many more things happen between the events I've mentioned; the movie is almost three hours long. It's well directed, and is possibly one of the most modernly made Croatian movies. I'd sincerely recommend to anyone, even if they are not from ex-Yugoslavia, because I think it's, objectively speaking, a good movie.

Great director. Antun Vrdoljak showed to us that not only he can make a spectacular, also that he can present the true horror in Croatia. Good plot, good actors (G.Visnjic and G.Navojec were great!) But I wanted something else. I don't know what, but I expected more(I don't say the film wasn't bad, in fact, it was excellent), but I just thought it will show something else. Because the story is going to fast, you can't know what will happen in the next moment, and things are happening in every moment. But I liked the film, enjoyed the series, loved the plot, the actors, the director.... Looking it in a perspective way, this film was a true story about the horrible things that happened in Croatia). So, if you're interested in watching this film, I truly recommended it!

This is one of the most expensive Croatian movies ever made. Unfortunately, one of the worst, too. This epic by Antun Vrdoljak, with its controversial evocations of the second world war in Croatia, represents the hard line and its seems like a high budget propaganda of "state" cinema. Vrdoljak doesn't know that social and cultural, instead of political, criticism penetrated much deeper and proved itself to be far more lasting than any type of political confrontation. In fact, that's not a movie but a series of "wise saying" spoken by the one-dimensional and totally unnatural and affected characters. Very boring and awkward direction, graced with the terrible acting makes this movie as one of the worst ever made in Ex-Yugoslav countries.