The Black Bomber

Crni bombarder; comedy, Serbia, 1992; D: Darko Bajić, S: Dragan Bjelogrlić, Anica Dobra, Nebojša Bakočević, Petar Bozović, Bogdan Diklić, Danilo 'Bata' Stojković

Belgrade in near future. Crni ("Black") is a young talk host of a local radio station who is often trying to provoke his listeners. One day he attends a rock concert with his friend and falls in love with the lead singer Luna, although she is keeping him on distance. Every morning Crni wakes up not able to remember what happened the previous night. One evening, he starts a live transmission where he is criticizing the president Marković, upon which he gets fired and arrested. In revolt, he starts broadcasting in a van from the streets, causing people to demonstrate against the government and an inspector to persecute him. Crni gets arrested, but president Marković meets with him and says that it was all a misunderstanding, letting him go.

"The Back Bomber" is an amusing and easily watchable little comedy that gained cult status thanks to its story that, as many movies from Serbia in those days, symbolically predicted the chaos and break up of Yugoslavia during the dictatorship of Slobodan Milošević. The first sequence of the film is conveniently surreal, daring and hip: the main protagonist, DJ Crni, is kissing a naked girl in his car at night, but all of a sudden she starts feeling a little nauseous. She exits the car naked and stops in front of a building, where she inexplicably starts levitating up in the air. Although that exposition announces a non-stop parade of quirkiness, the rest of the film is actually rather tame, mild and sustained, in the end even turning into a drama about rebellion against the dictatorship. At moments cute, "Bomber" is a good film about radio broadcasting, equipped with sparse humor (in one of those rare hilarious scenes, Crni and Luna are persecuted by a policemen. But as he starts crossing the street, a bus abruptly stops and thus "catapults" one of the passengers through its windshield on the street!) and somewhat too often exploiting the primitive side of citizens, overstretched and thin, but successful in its intentions. Anica Dobra is excellent as the wild rock singer Luna, but the best role was delivered by the legendary comedian Danilo 'Bata' Stojković as the dictator/president Marković, here unfortunately appearing only for barely one minute in the beginning and the ending of the film.

Grade:++