Number 55 (2014)

Simply A Masterpiece

Purely Joyful Movie!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

You people are so stupid. This film is about Croatian soldiers who tried to stop Serbian grenades coming from the near village and targeting the town of Pakrac. You think this is pointless??? My father was in war and he told me that they were singing Croatian songs and playing cards on the battlefield and we Croatians love our country and we will give anything to protect Her! While I was watching this film my heart was kicking my chest like someone was inside me trying to get out. You don't understand the point of this film. This is a true story. This is exactly how was there in 1991. I could write a million page book to tell the story about Croatia's history since 7th century until today.

This is a war movie. A pride of Croatia's cinematography of 2014. Portraying a famous battle of Croatia's war for independence in 1991. But, it is a poor effort. Though the photography and effects in some cases are decent, that is a small gain against fake dialogs, meaningless script and small time acting. The story goes about a trip of a DIY tank into Serbian village on Croatia's territory and the authors would like us to believe that the tank is actually assaulted by rebelled ethnic minority rather than the armored vehicle attacking the village in the act of ethnic cleansing. And those believing the first, are good guys, and those believing the second are bad, ugly, SOB s. The enemy is portrayed as an unintelligent bunch of ugly drunks- with compliments of wartime propaganda department. They are so stupid that they are playing cards in a stable fifty meters away from a battle, running in bunches on surrounded enemy, jumping into house occupied by the enemy through the window without using a hand grenade in front, giving the sound department a chance to terrorize spectator's ears with gunfire sound while good guys are killing them in dozens. Not much better than in partisan movies mass produced in former Yugoslavia by semi artistic propaganda teams. Both sides are using World War II names of Nazi collaborators - Chetniks and Ustashe for the opposite side, which were actually both sides' propaganda names (Chetniks have some history of resistance to Nazis, BTW). Good guys are so good that they do not notice that they have almost children among them, that they did not mean to but they must and that some of them are looking more scary than real Nazi butchers. Anyway, their war effect is not worth a Croatian Serb's house destroyed while giving them a cover and film makers' effect is not worth blanks used. If you decide to waste a more of an hour and a half of meaningless "our boys against the evil ones" story, your head will echo with loud gunfire noise while you're sending to hell Balkan tribes and their conflicts. No artistic values just film makers trying to engrave their names into national monument.

for the whole movie when you watched, there seemed to miss a lot of important ingredients that making a military genre movie at least worth watching, not this one. what we got here were bunch of guys dressed in cameo, got lot of firepower but did a very stupid and blind battle against a larger enemy force. these guys drove out of their base on a funny primitive armor truck into the enemy territory. there was not too much story in this whole flick, what we got was they just shot blindly against nothing and there was almost no meaningful storyline to support a more interesting movie other than constant assault rifles blasts from the very beginning to the very end. a battle fought so purposelessly and lost, left these guy killed by their enemy with extreme prejudice and without mercy. i don't know what the screenplay writer and the director wanted to portray a battle fatally fought in 1991 in Bosnia. i just watched it numbly without any feeling at all. the special effects were good enough, but not enough to make the movie itself great or worth watching. what is the purpose of making this film is just beyond my reach. the sound of the gun fights and those soldiers died one by one were the only two things that i remember, nothing else.

Don't expect much psychological depth, over analyzing about the war, certainly none of the liberal aspect that filmmakers tend to take when they want to question the reasons behind the war, or at least show the "bad guys" state of mind justifying in some way their actions, if you want that, there is a great movie about war in Bosnia: Ničija zemlja. This is something different, one heroic battle. It is based on actual heroic battle in small village in Croatia, crew did an excellent job of bringing that event to life, rifles, uniforms, acting, village... all is of unquestionable quality. There are as well few nice details, that add to authenticity, like rosemary around the soldiers neck etc. Unfortunately some of it will just Croatians appreciate to full extent. Director is keeping it simple while still in few lines explaining everything you need to know about this war. Most of the attention is on the battle, anxiety, comradery and war tactics (or the lack of it, most of those Croatians were rookies, as were Četniks, who were on top of that mostly drunks), there is just a little interaction between characters before the battle, it is simple and just enough, while we learn basic stuff about characters throughout the battle. There is a lot of slow motion explosions and gunshot wounds that look amazing, there is even first person perspective in some scenes, it all adds to very high paced and dramatic atmosphere, while remaining amazingly realistic. There is no dumb action movie scenes where the guy is shooting, and then we see thousands of bad guys running around like idiots and dying. Most of the rounds are shot completely blind, some even without aiming, nevertheless in real war there is much more suppressing fire that doesn't hit anything, even in close range. Dialogue is fantastic, minimalistic but still enough realistic that you actually believe that they are real people in real war. It is a real hard core war movie, with all the drama that follows, that we Croatians have been longing for. Not to say that previous have failed, but none has shown the fierce action and/or have failed short dragging you into the hell of firefight in the Croatian War of Independence. At times it will make you laugh, at times it is grim and ruthless as it comes (followed by excellent gloomy music), and I don't want to sound overly pathetic, but it will make you feel proud.Overall great action, great drama, authentic... Stop reading this and go watch it!