Dredd

Dredd; science-fiction action thriller, UK / South Africa / USA, 2012; D: Pete Travis, S: Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Wood Harris, Lena Headey, Rachel Wood

In the future, the police sends Judges who arrest and sentence criminals, but can only cover 6% of all the crimes reported. Judge Dredd gets a new partner, Cassandra Anderson, a psychic, and they both get the assignment to investigate the murder of three people who were thrown from the top of Peach Trees, a huge apartment building. They arrest criminal Kay, but the building is run by drug dealer Ma-Ma, an ex-prostitute, who shuts down the entire building and orders all the inhabitants to attack and kill Dredd and Anderson. The two police enforcers thus climb with Kay floor by floor, in order to get to Ma-Ma on the top of the 200-storey building. Kay is sought after since he can testify that Ma-Ma is producing the new drug, "Slo-Mo". In the end, Dredd and Anderson manage to reach the top and throw Ma-Ma from the building, killing her.

This second live action film adaptation of the comic-books "Judge Dredd" is regarded as better than the 1st one directed by D. Cannon in '95—a tight storyline, fast pace and a concise direction by Pete Travis are the main virtues of this 'hard-boiled' action flick. "Dredd" is very violent and brutal at times (the slow-motion sequence of Dredd shooting a criminal through its cheeks; people thrown from the top of the building and forced to experience their death in slow-motion due to the drug "Slo-Mo" that makes their brain slow down), which undermines and narrows its scope, yet the main protagonist is something like a variation of Robocop—he embodies the rule of law and follows it to the fullest, treating pacifist people in a peaceful way, and violent people in a violent way, each the way they deserve. In the opening act, a criminal takes a woman as a hostage and expects to use her as a human shield to escape, but Dredd shows his characteristic integrity when he agrees to have a negotiation, saying: "Release the hostage, unharmed, and I guarantee you a sentence of life in an iso-cube, without parole". The criminal is angry at that remark: "That's the deal you're offering?", but Dredd assures him: "If you do not comply, the sentence is death." Karb Urban is effective as Dredd, though he never takes his helmet off, and Olivia Thirlby is excellent as the 'tough' police girl Anderson who never succumbs to the role of a victim. The main villain is a woman, Ma-Ma (Lena Headey), giving a refreshing feminist touch. The set-up of Dredd and Anderson climbing up in a sealed-off apartment building is reminiscent of the thriller "The Raid", giving a neat suspense-rush. It is sad that the movie lacks humor, such as in the delicious sequence where a wounded Dredd says "Wait!" to his nemesis, and is a tad too 'hard core' at times, yet "Dredd" offers enough to satisfy action fans.

Grade:++

Bums and Princesses (Season 4)

Bitange i princeze; comedy series, Croatia, 2008; D: Goran Kulenović, S: Rene Bitorajac, Hrvoje Kečkeš, Mila Elegović, Tarik Filipović, Nataša Dangubić, Predrag Vusović, Mile Kekin, Alka Vuica

Due to Teo's relationship with the criminal girlfriend Adriana, all his friends land in prison, too: Robi, Irena, Kazo, Lucija and the Boss. Luckily, they are all released. Since Adriana serves a prison sentence, she gives birth and thus Teo has to take care of their baby alone, much to dismay of the jealous Lucija, who is secretly in love with him. Kazo starts a relationship with an urologist, but is insecure since she sees so many bigger penises every day. The Boss hires Irena and Kazo to work in his marketing Agency, where they receive strange requests from customers: from a celebrity woman who wants them to make a commercial proving she is not a man; sponsors wanting to film a commercial about Croatia's accession into the EU; conservative men from the Sinj area... In the meantime, Teo secretly works as a secret agent, hunting for small time criminals.

Season 4 of "Bums and Princesses", the popular Croatian version of "Friends", doesn't quite hold up—it has one genius episode of comedy perfection, 4.10; and five good ones: 4.16, 4.17, 4.22, 4.23 and 4.24; yet in order to get to those good ones, the viewers have to pave their way through 18 lackluster, schematic and inept episodes full of too much empty walk and corny gags. It is a pity, but the first nine episodes of season 4 are underwhelming, failing to conjure up some good jokes. Teo's misadventures as a secret agent do not lead to much and fall flat. The subplot involving Robi working as a butler for a count in a castle, where Teo feared that the count wants to restore Austria-Hungary, but is in reality just preparing to start a career as a folk singer, also disappoints. Excellent actor Hrvoje Keckes gives a surprisingly energetic performance as the clumsy movie buff Kazo, and is able to say even the most mundane lines with enthusiasm, but is equally as limited by the thin storyline. One miniscule exemption is episode 4.3 which features three hooligans, fans of association football who storm into Kazo's apartment, even though he doesn't know them, but surprise in a plot twist when two of the them later turn out to be police officers in disguise and arrest a criminal at Kazo's Agency—leaving even the third hooligan bewildered, puzzled that they were all "faking it" all the time. However, the first truly "juicy" part does not show up all until the legendary episode 4.10, which is funnier than all previous nine episodes combined.

Episode 4.10 is presented as a series of short TV commercials of the Agency, and all of them end on a non sequitur when the viewers find out what product or service they are promoting. In one clip, Mile Kekin wants to pay at a shopping store with a giant, 3 ft long credit card, but the clerk declines it. When a police officer asks for Mile's identification, Mile pulls out an equally oversized ID, causing the policeman to lose his patience and decide to arrest him. But just as the policeman wants to book him, the handcuffs suddenly shrink into miniscule size compared to Mile's hands. The policeman just looks at the handcuffs in confusion, until the commercial ends with: "Prepare yourself for new perspectives: EU! Coming soon!" In another clip, Kazo plays a caricature man who discovers that his neighbor, played by Robi, is driver's license counterfeiter, and blackmails him into fabricating one, too, which leads to the slogan: "You can do it that way, but you can also do it legally! Car driving school "Tires"!" But the comedy height is the clip where Kazo enters a porn store and is relaxed when he orders eatable underwear, a vibrator ("Cockmaster soft or Long-John?" - "Whatever. The black one." - "Long-John Black."), and a porn DVD, but stutters when he makes one last request—a car map of Croatia. Upon getting it, Kazo rushes to enter a car with Robi, showing him how he bought the map ("The guy didn't suspect anything." - "Yes! Bjelovar, here we come!"). A similar gag is repeated when Kazo enters a brothel run by Mile, but is only interested in the "illegal" tour guides to Bjelovar ("Bjelovar. The best hidden secret of the Mediterranean") . All the actors have a field day in this episode, which has a staggering level of humorous inspiration. No further episode reaches that creative zenith, though another good one is 4.22 which features a similar style of the crew trying to create a TV clip for promoting the EU, with Irena and Robi bickering over whether to talk about the Croatian Miss Universe or football players ("Who cares about some guys chasing after a skin bubble?"), until Kazo delivers a black-and-white art-film clip in which Teo laments how Croatia "gave so much to Europe" only for him to now stand with other Balkan people in line at the borders. TV host Krešimir Mišak also has a neat cameo in episode 4.23. While it has sadly too much lame jokes, "Bums and Princesses" still have enough good jokes even in season 4 to satisfy their comedy fans.

Grade:++

Tomorrow Never Dies

Tomorrow Never Dies; action, UK / USA, 1997; D: Roger Spottiswoode, S: Pierce Brosnan, Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Pryce, Teri Hatcher, Judi Dench, Joe Don Baker, Ricky Jay, Götz Otto

The British MI6 discovers a secret weapon's bazaar for terrorists and fires a missile at them, but right then, the transmission discovers a nuclear missile among the weapons. Luckily, James Bond is on terrain, steals the fighter jet with the nuclear weapon and thus avoids a disaster. However, an even bigger problem is manifesting: Elliot Carver, a media mogul, orchestrates an attack on a British frigate after it distorted their GPS signal and led them off-course in the South China Sea. Carver then blames the Chinese Army and publishes the story in his newspaper "Media". Britain and China are on the brink of war; Carver plans to get broadcast rights in China for the next 100 years when his general takes over China, so Bond enters the game. Carver does not shy away from even killing his wife, Bond's ex-girlfriend, but the British agent teams up with the female Chinese spy Wai Lin and they together sink Carver's ship in the sea, killing him.

The 18th instalment of the "assembly line" spy franchize about James Bond easily grossed finely at the box office and is the best film starring Pierce Brosnan as 007. Since it is predictable that Bond will survive all the ostensibly "dangerous" situations and traps thrown at him at the end of the day anyway (in order to get another sequel), a big plus point is that a lot of the story turned towards satire. This way the villain, Carver (a cynical Jonathan Pryce), is trying to create his own news for his tabloid "Tomorrow" ("The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success!", he claims), and even shape the events in the process. This is neatly summed up in the scene where Carver is typing the headlines with gusto: he writes "British Sailors Killed", but then deletes the last word and uses a more sensationalistic title: "British Sailors Murdered". Carver even teases Bond when he presents him with an obituary on the screen prepared in advance: "Commander James Bond Dead". The choreography of the action sequences are excellent (including the sly chase sequence where Bond is driving the car over a remote control from his back seat, and thus at one point exits and allows the car to jump from the top of the building); Roger Spottiswoode's direction is solid; a few ideas are amusing (Bond and Lin slowly descend down from the top of a building by holding on to a giant banner of Carver, thereby tearing his poster face through the middle); whereas Michelle Yeoh is wonderfully charming, even overshadowing Teri Hatcher, which are the main virtues.

Grade:++

Goldeneye

Goldeneye; action, UK / USA, 1995; D: Martin Campbell, S: Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, Izabella Scorupco, Famke Janssen, Joe Don Baker, Judi Dench, Robbie Coltrane, Tchéky Karyo

Alec Trevelyan, whose parents were survivors of the Stalinist massacre of Cossacks who were repatriated by the British soldiers to the Soviet Union after World War II, wants to take revenge on the British. He thus teams up with Xenia Onatopp, Russian General Ourumov and computer hacker Boris and takes control of the Goldeneye, a spy satellite in order to fire a laser on London, and thereby also hide his theft of money from the Bank of England. However, MI6 sends their trustworthy spy 007, James Bond, who teams up with Natalya, a survivor of Trebelyan’s raid on a Russian base, and manages to stop the evil plan.  

After a disappointing commercial success with “Licence to Kill”, it took a long wait of six years until the producers decided to continue the James Bond film series with this 17th installment, and this time, they did not choose wrong: “Goldeneye” proved to be a blockbuster. With its convoluted storyline and unconvincing motivations of the villain, the film is nothing better than “Licence to Kill”, but marked an improvement on a different front: casting Pierce Brosnan was a stroke of genius, since the charismatic actor gave a fresh kick to the franchise, needed to get it rolling again. “Goldeneye” had the burden of being the 1st James Bond film after the end of the Cold War, the spy era that gave birth to the subgenre, yet it found new ways, new enemies, and even amusing opening credits in which the Communist symbols are dismantled. Several problems still plague the film: it has too many illogical, naive or ridiculous ideas, the biggest one being the same old cliche of writers writing themselves into the corner whenever James Bond is captured by the villains, since they cannot kill him outright but have to concoct far-fetched ploys to eliminate him, which gives him time to escape (in this edition, after the bad guy captures Bond and Natalya, he knocks him unconscious, and the agent wakes up tied with Natalya in a helicopter about to shoot rockets which will return and destroy it, yet, naturally, Bond and Natalya escape via an ejection seat). The film also lacks wit: the small episode featuring Robbie Coltrane almost steals the show and overshadows even Bond with his charm. This is set up already in the dialogue between Bond and agent Wade: “Who is the competition?” - “Ah, an ex-KGB guy. Got a limp on his leg. Name’s Zukovsky.” - “Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky?” - “Yes. You know him?” Bond replies: “I gave him the limp.” The character of Onatopp, the villain woman who gets excitement through violence, is so over-the-top it is laughable. Overall, though, the film has just enough charm and elan to offer solid entertainment. 

Grade:++

White Balloon

Badkonake sefid; drama, Iran, 1995; D: Jafar Panahi, S: Aida Mohammadkhani, Mohsen Kafili, Fereshteh Sadr Orfani

Tehran. It is Iranian New Year, and the 7-year old girl Razieh wants to buy a new goldfish for herself, but her mother is against it. Her brother Ali persuades mother to give Razieh a 500 toman banknote to buy herself the goldfish, anyway. On her way, Razieh stops at a gathering of people around a snake charmer, who takes her money thinking it is to pay for his act, but since the girl protests, he gives her the banknote back again. At the shop, Razieh realizes that the fish she wants is 200 toman, not 100, and that she lost the banknote again. She and Ali spot the banknote at the bottom of a grate of a closed store. They ask the neighboring clerk to help, but he cannot reach the banknote with a rod. Finally, an Afghan boy selling white balloons uses his stick and a bubble gum to get the banknote, but Razieh and Ali just leave without saying anything.

Jafar Panahi's feature length debut film as a director is a gentle, simple, unobtrusive, touching and honest little film, though he is not able to keep the interest of the viewers to the fullest in the rather overstretched second half. Panahi is the best when he presents small, humorous 'slice-of-life' moments that are small, but somehow have a big impact on the positive impression of the storyline: in one of them, the heroine Razieh wants to buy a goldfish for New Year, but her brother Ali protests because they already have fish in their pond. Razieh replies at that: "You call these goldfish, you haven't seen the others! It's as though they're dancing when they move their fins!" In a neat directorial intervention, their father (who is never seen, but only heard off-screen) hits a bowl she is holding in the pond with a soap, complaining at Ali: "I tell you shampoo and you come back with soap!" Another neat intervention is that the story plays almost in real time: the film's running time is 1 hour and 22 minutes, and in the opening a radio announcer is heard saying: "1 hour and 22 minutes until New Year". This is repeated two more times in the film, the last one being when they say: "44 minutes until New Year", which is congruent with the remaining time of the "White Balloon". Unfortunately, the last 40 minutes are just spent on the two kids sitting above the grate, trying to figure out how to get the banknote under it, which tends to slow the movie down way too much. A 10-minute sequence where a soldier sits to talk to the girl, for instance, leads nowhere and is somewhat boring. Curiously, the film's theme is not about the innocence of the kids, as some thought, but about something else: the inconsiderate nature of society. Throughout the film, Razieh is ignored by her mother, by the snake charmer and by the store owner, all of whom are preoccupied with themselves. This comes full circle when Razieh and Ali themselves just take the help of an Afghan boy and leave him alone without even saying thanks, thereby becoming inconsiderate themselves, signalling how even the weaker ones of the weak are always brushed off on the margins.

Grade:++

The Accidental Tourist

The Accidental Tourist; drama, USA, 1988, D: Lawrence Kasdan, S: William Hurt, Geena Davis, Kathleen Turner, Amy Wright, Bill Pullman, Ed Begley, Jr.  

Macon writes tourist guides for a living. Following the death of their 12-year old son, his wife Sarah files for divorce. One day, Macon has to leave his dog at a pet hotel, where he becomes friends with employee Muriel. The two start a relationship, but he then finds out Muriel has a little sick son. Feeling overwhelmed, he tries to end the relationship, but Muriel convinces him to continue. When Sarah announces she wants to reconcile, Macon dumps Muriel. At a flight for Paris, he meets Muriel again, who stays in the same hotel and wants contact. Macon sends her away. When Sarah shows up, he realizes he cannot remarry her again and leaves. He takes a taxi and meets a boy who looks like his son. He stops the taxi when he accidentally spots Muriel on the street.  

“The Accidental Tourist” is an intimate, quiet character drama film about a tourist guide writer who likes to travel to different places, but ironically cannot travel to different emotional states outside his life routine in his own hometown. From today’s perspective, the film seems too stiff, schematic and lukewarm at times, achieving a good quality, but barely. The main protagonist Macon is just so passive and placid the story has difficulty engaging the viewers, whereas the script lacks ingenuity. The most charming character is thus Macon’s love interest Muriel, played good by Geena Davis — the best moment is when Macon admits he is broken inside at her doorstep and wants to end their relationship, yet Muriel simply lets him inside to hug and comfort him in private; another fine one is his observation: "This odd woman helped me. She's given me another chance to decide who I am" — but even she is hindered by the underwritten role. At least three plot points are terribly contrived and banal: the sequence where the dog jumps from the stairs on Macon who steps on a laundry kart on wheels and thus falls and breaks his leg; the overlong Thanksgiving sequence of the family debating if a turkey is undercooked; and the convenient way Macon wants to reach after a chord behind a desk but only strains his back and is bedridden. All three could have been either better written or deleted altogether. Some symbolism is understood visually, such as the camera pan from Macon walking on crutches due to his broken leg up to Muriel, to show how she metaphorically became his “crutches” for his broken life following the divorce. This comes full circle near the end, when Macon simply leaves his luggage behind on the street, and his old life as well. Others fare worse, such as Muriel’s sick little son. Director Lawrence Kasdan allowed for too much of the story to go way out of hand at a running time of 120 minutes—especially since a lot of the dialogues are just an ‘empty walk’— but this is an overall nice little film.   

Grade:++

Battle Royale

Battle Royale; action thriller, Japan, 2000, D: Kinji Fukasaku, S: Aki Maeda, Tatsuya Fujiwara, Taro Yamamoto, Masanobu Ando, Kou Shibasaki, Takeshi Kitano, Chiaki Kuriyama

After the Japanese unemployment rate reached 15%, teenagers massively turned to crime and violence, so the government passed the strict Battle Royale Act, in order to discipline juvenile delinquency: 42 high school students are abducted in a bus, placed with electric collars, given such weapons as guns and knives; and ordered by teacher Kitano to fight and kill each other on an uninhabited island, until only one teenager is left alive. Scores accept the task and murder each other, while the two friends Shuya and Noriko are the only ones refusing to fight, teaming up with Kawada, a guy who survived the last Battle Royale. The three are the last survivors and fake they shot each other since they know of microphones on their collars. When the soldiers go to find their bodies, the three confront and kill Kitano. Kawada dies, but Shuya and Noriko escape on a boat and hide as fugitives in Tokyo.  

The director Kinji Fukasaku’s final film also became his most famous one, "Battle Royale", a bizarre forerunner to "The Hunger Games" and a more darker restructuring of "Assassination Classroom", which depicts a murder tournament of teenagers presented as a harsh lesson on growing up. Today, naturally, with less and less children being born in modern Japan, nobody would ever dream of harming the scarce youth anymore. Several themes emerge from this allegorical storyline: integrity, presented through the teenagers Shuya and Noriko who try to resist the order to kill their classmates, since she even throws the backpack with weapons into the sea; true nature through the observation that during the crisis times people show their true faces and dissolve their facade; anguished adolescents in fear of finding their place in the world of scarcity (the new, young generation has to leave their carefree childhood behind and learn how to fight each other - for the few remaining jobs, for instance); and political messages about how the governments resort to extremism to maintain their authority over civil unrest during crisis times. The movie has some grandiose moments of style which give it momentum: for instance, after each murder, subtitles inform about the name of the deceased and the number of players still alive (“Boy, Kuninobu- dead. 40 to go.”). 

Some are also presented in a refreshingly playful manner (the video in which a cute woman explains the rules of Battle Royale to the teenagers who will fight on the island; two girls on the hill, one waiving a drape while the other speaks over the loudspeaker, and then they change and the other one waives while the first one talks). Anyone wondering why Tarantino picked actress Chiaki Kuriyama for his film “Kill Bill Vol. 1” will understand when seeing her deliver a graceful swang song performance here, in an episode of unexpected humanity: her character Chigusa is seen in a flashback, jogging on the street with yellow exercise clothes, while a guy she has a crush on is driving on a bicycle behind her, and she turns right, whereupon the film delivers an elegant transition cut to Chigusa jogging in a different scene, in the same yellow clothes, but just with an electric collar on her neck, to show that she is back in the dark present. Luckily, “Royale” refuses to sink into splatter violence or sadism, except maybe in the scene where a decapitated head with a granade in its mouth is thrown through the window, and thus most of the action seems almost like cartoon violence. Unfortunately, the 42 teenage characters just come and go, barely having more than 3 minutes of time to do anything before they get killed, which makes them one-dimensional, whereas the ending is anticlimactic and simply no good, because it lacks a point of a conclusion. Let’s be honest, a part of the concept is obviously just of exploitative nature, trying to draw attention through (teenage) violence, but it is still interesting how well made it is at times, nonetheless.  

Grade:++

Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great; historical adventure, USA / Spain, 1956; D: Robert Rossen, S: Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, Danielle Darrieux, Fredric March, Barry Jones, Harry Andrews

The life of Alexander the Great (356-323 BC). His father, king Philip II of Macedon, brings Alexander on his campaign to invade and unite all the warring Greek city-states. Alexander is influenced by his mother Olympias, who fears that Philip II will leave his throne to a new heir with his new wife Eurydice, since he divorced Olympias. When Pausanias assassinates Philip II, Alexander is conveniently left as the new king and in charge of the army. In 334 BC Alexander and 30,000 Macedon soldiers cross into Anatolia, where they defeat the Persian army at the battle of Granicus. They liberate the Greek cities along Ionia. After the battle of Issus, the Persian king Darius III flees and is assassinated by his own men. The Achaemenid Empire dissolves and is replaced by Alexander’s empire. In 323 BC, Alexander dies in Babylon from unknown causes, leaving his generals in a scramble for power.  

The American cinema was for some reason always more interested in the era of ancient Rome than in the ancient Hellenistic era, and thus Alexander the Great was the subject of only one US film adaptation in the 20th century, this one from 1956 directed by Robert Rossen—while it took 48 years until another one was made, by O. Stone. As with many history films, this one also struggles from trying to translate the dry events from the past and make them feel genuine, alive to the modern audiences, whereas Richard Burton is an unusual choice to play the title role, equipped with a strange blonde wigg (he is too “burly” to be playing the swift, athletic lad Alexander) though it is an overall very solid film that manages to at least show some episodes from that time. The wars of Alexander were so grand that it would take a 4-hour film, at a minimum, to try to give these events justice, and thus this film spends too much time on its prologue—Alexander does not cross into Anatolia all until 74 minutes into the film. The story also simply lacks pathos, and it shows only three of Alexander’s battles (Chaerona, Granicus, Issus). However, Rossen refused to present Alexander’s life as a hagiography, and was realistic about some of his tyranic treatments, whereas there are some good moments here (Alexander standing on a cliff, promising victories to Zeus the world has not seen yet, while his cape is blown in the wind; when Darius III sends him a golden toy to play with to leave him alone, noting his empire has a lot of gold, Alexander writes him a response: “You shouldn’t have mentioned the gold, because now we will fight twice as hard to get it!”; the quote: “We were outnumbered in everything except courage and discipline”). While a good film, “Alexander the Great” is only a rump version of what this material could have been at its best.    

Grade:++

Sorcerer

Sorcerer; action road movie, USA, 1977, D: William Friedkin, S: Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, Amidou, Ramon Bieri 

Various criminals and felons from different parts of the world — Nilo, wanted in Veracruz for assassinations; Kassem, wanted in Jerusalem for bombing; Victor, wanted in Paris for fraud; and Scanlon, wanted in New Jersey for robbing a church and shooting a priest — find refuge in a desolate village somewhere in Latin America. In order to get a large sum of money, they accept a job of driving two trucks full of nitroglycerin 200 miles through the jungle to extinguish a fire at an oil rig. On their journey, they reach numerous obstacles, until only Scanlon brings a box of nitroglycerin to the destination, on foot. He is rewarded, but a bounty hunter awaits him outside a bar.  

The problem with remakes is that even those good ones lack the “surprise factor” for the viewers initiated with the original. William Friedkin’s “Sorcerer” is one of those good remakes that would otherwise get more recognition had they not been eclipsed by Clouzot’s timeless classic “The Wages of Fear”, which draws inescapable comparisons, but is even today a wonder to look at, since it is at times almost an “impossible” movie extravaganza that was still made, nonetheless. Friedkin’s pace is more dynamic and direct than Clouzot’s, establishing the set-up quickly, and he really films in a jungle while Clouzot filmed in the safety of the French South — whereas he relies more on visuals than on dialogues, yet the four characters are still somewhat underdeveloped and thin. Just like in the original, this film also depicts the two truck drivers embarking on an allegorical road movie, on a long journey through the horrors of life, where the people are just toys in the game of fate, chance and destiny. Not all of the new additions work — for instance, the sequence where a native Indian is running in front of the truck and suddenly sits down is not that scary or suspenseful. However, at least one sequence is equivalent to Clouzot’s original intensity, the famed 10-minute one where the two trucks have to slowly go over a deteriorating bridge during strong rain, which is so shaky it rocks left and right — it is insanity watching it, depicting Friedkin’s audacity and sheer creative will in following his artistic vision, equal to Herzog’s in “Fitzcarraldo”. Wild and raw, using surreal images (a helicopter flying over a jungle hill towards a pillar of smoke coming from an oil rig on fire), this film ilustriously depicts the long struggle between two forces: the force of a cruel, destructive world, and the force of life that refuses to wither in order to live on.   

Grade:++