A young lad, Bobo, is attacked by two criminals in an elevator for not paying them a racket, so he kills one and wounds the other one. His lawyer defends him, and Bobo lands in a mental institution. Bobo flees to see his girlfriend, but she is accidentally shot when the police tries to stop Bobo from escaping the asylum. Bobo is hit by a car driven by a woman, and takes her as a hostage. Along the way, he shoots a cop, and hides with the woman inside an abandoned barn. The police sniper accidentally hits and wounds the woman inside, who dies. The lawyer appeals to Bobo to surrender, but he shoots at everyone, until he himself is shot and killed by the police.
Goran Rusinovic directed his feature length debut film "Mondo Bobo" as an independent black-and-white film in 35mm tape in tune to numerous "fancy" daft filmmakers from the 90s, such as K. Smith and J. Jarmusch, yet its appeal has corroded with time. The storyline of a clumsy criminal who flees from the police references Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde" and Godard's "Breathless", but its dialogue is stale and conventional, as much as its story, and thus only the moody cinematography which captures Zagreb in an unusual, barely recognizable optics is able to engage. The most was achieved from Svebor Kranjc who plays Bobo's lawyer, in impossibly reasonable and logical contrast to the antagonist. In one interview, the lawyer even says this to the reporter: "He couldn't tolerate injustice, but he created it. He was Sisyphus. Can you imagine a happy Sisyphus?" Bobo himself is presented as a man who is always on the wrong place at the wrong time, and then does the dumbest possible choice which makes his situation even worse. When he has to pay the taxi fare, the annoyed Bobo just takes the car keys and throws them far away, but then throws money to the cab driver, who replies: "I don't have any change to return you." The finale is forced, since the director shoehorns too many contrivances to fit the crime-tragedy genre mold, yet it feels totally different from other Croatian movies from that time, which gives it a certain freshness.
Grade:++
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