Belgrade, 2 0 0 8. An American-Croatian reporter, Olivia, arrives to cover the trial of Serb soldiers who perpetrated the Vukovar massacre during the Croatian War of Independence. She specifically inquires about the sixth bus with 60 captured Croatian soldiers that disappeared. However, the locals are reluctant to tell her any details. She goes to Vukovar and befriends Josip who remembers the dark times of the Battle of Vukovar, when Croat and Serb friends split over whether to defend the city or to attack it with the Serb paramilitary. Sveto, a local Serb, was spared by a Croat friend who became a Croatian soldier. After the capture of the Croatian soldiers, Sveto managed to save him and release him to escape. Back in the present, Olivia admits to Josip that she witnessed the war when she was a little girl in Vukovar.
The director Eduard Galic gained interest about the Battle of Vukovar during his documentary series "Heroes of Vukovar", where he interviewed the surviving Croatian soldiers of said battle, which gave him a certain credit to try to make a feature length film about that rarely talked about event of the Croatian War (it was quickly overshadowed in the news by the outbreak of the even bloodier Bosnian War). While the limited budget constraints war movies, since elaborated pyrotechnics are needed to conjure up the intensity and destruction of war battles, "The Sixth Bus" managed to still deliver a solid depiction of it. Its story is divided in two parts: one plays out in 2 0 0 8, where the American-Croatian reporter Olivia (very good Zala Djuric) tries to uncover what happened to said bus; while the other story plays out during the sole Battle of Vukovar in a flashback, and is filmed in "washed out" colors, "Saving Private Ryan"-style. At times, the dialogue in the modern story tend to sound too artificial and fake, yet the sequences of the battle in the flashback story have suspense and dark moments. One of those memorable moments include a French volunteer for the Croatian Army, who taunts Serb soldiers over a walkie-talkie, jokingly calling their country "petit Serbia". Croatian soldiers fire anti-tank missiles at tanks driving through the Vukovar streets, and when a granade falls down into their basement, one soldier kicks it away as far as possible before the explosion. The scenes involving Croatian POW who exit a bus and have to endure when two rows of Serb paramilitary beating them with clubs is very bitter. Despite the fact that the Battle of Vukovar had many more stories to be told on the big screen, but the authors didn't have enough money to stage them all, "The Sixth Bus" is an honest little film that at least recorded some of its moments in cinema.
Grade:++
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