Category Archives: Reviews

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Savior (1998): An Extremely Grim Movie about the War in Bosnia

Thanks to TPC who commented on my post “Welcome to Sarajevo” I discovered this movie and have finally watched it.

Oh – my – God.

Before even trying to attempt to describe this movie let me quote from a NY Times review by Stephen Holden:

As Mr. Quaid’s character, Guy, perilously makes his way through the war-torn countryside, the film portrays a land whose people, regardless of ethnicity, have been reduced to animalistic survival tactics by the violence that has devastated the region. The war has turned seemingly ordinary people into potential murderers, rapists and torturers. And the movie’s unblinking scenes of atrocities are among the most graphic and upsetting ever shown in a commercial film.

This sums up quite a lot. Savior is really heavy stuff and so depressing. The goriest battle scenes from any WWI, WWII or Vietnam movie can never get as depressing as this. Like the war in Rwanda. A tribal war.

Gritty realism is not all we see and I did have my problems with this movie. There is  a very Christian undertone all through it. Or not even an undertone, rather a loud drone. The character change of Guy (Dennis Quaid) is psychologically not very convincing. I can understand that he goes berserk after his wife and his son get blown up in a terrorist attack but from then on… He escapes with his friend (Stellan Skarsgard – not one of his better roles and far too short) to the French Foreign Legion and from there we follow him to Bosnia where he is fighting as a mercenary on the side of the Serbs. We see him commit atrocities until he and another soldier, Goran, get to drive Vera, a pregnant young woman back to her family. She has been raped by a muslim and is now being treated as if it was her fault. Her fellow Serbs hate, blame  and despise her for this. Goran is a brute and what we see him do to an old woman and later to Vera is almost not watchable. I tell you, not for one second do you want to imagine yourself in the situation of one of those women.

The illustration of women as victims in war movies does find its sad culmination point in Savior.

After Vera has given birth under the most inhuman circumstances something snaps in Guy and he seems to reclaim  his humanity. From then on he is “The Savior”. It is not very subtle that the filmmakers chose to show us repeatedly that Guy is wearing  a cross with a three-dimensional Christ nailed to it.

The bleak parts that deal purely with this godforsaken war are overwhelming. Maybe it would really have been too hard to watch if they hadn’t tried to gloss it over a bit. Be is as it may… This movie exudes such an honest try at showing the atrocities of this war that I really think it should be watched. What makes me extremely thoughtful is to think that if these atrocities had been invented by a script writer we would say: “What a sick mind!”. But this did happen… And not even so long ago…

A brief remark about the music. This movie has a very beautiful score, in parts traditional regional folk songs sung by mysteriously haunting female voices. Some of it can be heard in the trailer.

What do you think? Any people from ex Yugoslavia reading this? Is Welcome to Sarajevo the better movie?

I am not sure if Welcome to Sarajevo is better, but it is less controversial. When it comes to liking I must admit I am partial to Savior. I liked it much more than Welcome to Sarajevo. There is something in the character of Guy that I could relate to. Probaly his utter loneliness that encloses him like an aura. This cold sniper personality  he is wearing to shield himself and hide that he has been deeply wounded… I don’t approve of his acts, of course, but from an emotional point of view I think I get him.

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Hope and Glory (1987): Seeing War with the Eyes of a Child

Hope and Glory is such a lyrical and beautiful movie. A rare gift of total enchantment. Like a perfect summer day.

Bill is only 9-year-old at the beginning of WWII. He is the only boy in a house full of women as his father has joined the forces. For him and his little sister the war is a great adventure. They don´t really understand the dangers. Bill collects shrapnel and plays with other boys in the ruins of the houses in his street in a suburb of London. At night they run for cover from the constant bombing. When their house burns down, his mother takes them to the country where her parents own a splendid stately home on a lake. The children enjoy idyllic  summer holidays. They  go fishing with their grumpy grandfather or play cricket. Their mother´s sisters join them, as do other family members. At the end of summer the war holds a special surprise for them. Their school has been bombed. It is easy to understand what joy this bears.

Hope and Glory is also a look back at a lost world where families were much closer, where life, despite the hardships and the war seemed somehow better than today. And of course it does remind us of our own childhood that often with hindsight seems like a lost paradise with little daily worries. Still the depiction of the war is very realistic. For us with our grown-up´s eyes there is no mistaking it for a joyride.

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9th Company aka 9 Rota (2005) or “No one has ever managed to conquer Afghanistan”

Many have called 9th Company a Russian Platoon. I think it would be more accurate to call it a mix of Full Metal Jacket and Hamburger Hill. I compare it with Full Metal Jacket because of the first part, that is taking place in the boot camp, and with Hamburger Hill because the second part is also based on a true infantry combat story that consisted of the holding of a hill. But be it as it may, it is easily understood what it means  that this movie deserves to be named among the very best of its kind: It is extremely good. And in some respects (e.g. character development, emotions) it is even better than the aforementioned.

We watch the 9th Company from their early days in boot camp in Uzbekistan until they are finally flown to Afghanistan. The boot camp part is one of the best I have ever seen. And its end, the night before they depart to Afghanistan, is unique. This scene shows the whole difference between this Russian movie and any American infantry combat movie I have ever seen. The soldiers show emotions, even those of fear and sadness and speak about them openly. They also talk about why they volunteered to go to Afghanistan and one of them, a painter says: “War is only life and death, nothing unneccessary”, meaning he thinks it is utterly beautiful. Of course he is immediately contradicted by others.

The long boot camp sequence and the following early days in Afghanistan are heavy and foreboding. It is a slow and effective build-up until the final intense combat part.

The 9th company was among the last to leave Afghanistan. Their last mission was to hold Hill 3234. A group of only 36 soldiers fought against the superior number of 400 Afghan rebels. We see many of those that we got to know and like during the movie get killed. There is a moment when those who survived go completely mental so that in the end they are victorious however highly decimated. But this battle is historical for other reasons as well. It was the last battle in the last war the crumbling Soviet union was ever to fight.

The key message is delivered early on, when the recruits learn about the culture and the land they are going to invade. The instructor who teaches them says literallay : “In all of history, no one has ever managed to conquer Afghanistan. No one. Ever”

The movie is gripping from beginning to end. And the characters are remarkably interesting. Even the instructor at the boot camp, an apparently mean and sadistic brute, is shown in all his complexity and we understand him in the end. What I liked best is the inside look at the Afghan terrain. I had a feeling to understand why nobody except those who lived there for centuries was ever capable of mastering this terrain. Those mountains with their tunnel systems are not unlike the Vietnamese  jungle. An abundance of hiding places; the enemy could be anywhere at any time.

This movie gets 5/5 stars. Watch it!

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The Brylcreem Boys (1998): A WWII Comedy, Drama and Romance in Ireland

The least I can say about this movie is that it is total fun. I did certainly never expect to laugh during a POW movie but that actually happened repeatedly. Admittedly it is not the most refined humor, it’s rather of the burlesque, slapstick kind. But it is never overdone. The movie is just sprinkled with it here and there. The overall tone is often quite serious. Still it is one of the very rare movies you could probably watch with  children (although planes and people get shot down at the beginning and there is some fist fighting as well).

Ireland having lost many of its young men during the Civil War had decided to stay strictly neutral during WWII. This was not much appreciated by the allies. Unlike Switzerland Ireland insisted that every soldier encountered on Irish soil was to be taken prisoner. What was not universally known however was the fact that they put all the prisoners, French, British, American, Canadian and German into the same camp.

The Brylcreem Boys is not based on a true story but on true facts that have been carefully assembled and put together to tell a convincing story. Two fighter pilots, the Canadian Miles Keogh  (Bill Campbell) and the German Rudolph von Stegenbeck (Angus Macfadyen),  shoot each other down over Ireland and are both taken prisoners and brought to the same camp. While on leave they  fall in love with the same girl, the strong-willed Mattie (Jean Butler),  which adds a bit of romance to the whole story. Their rivalry and mutual dislike is very intense in the beginning but over the course of the movie and during many incidents they realize that they are not that different despite being on different sides.

Much of the funny elements of the movie stem from contrasting the Germans and their rigid discipline and total lack of sense of humour with the  more easy-going other prisoners. (Unfortunately there aren’t any German actors in the movie and some of the accents that the cast adopted are a bit laughable.)

Even though they are far away from the war itself, one of the prisoners sort of brings it back with him when he returns from London from his futile attempt at escaping the camp.  His account from his stay in the British capital makes the tragedy of the constant bombing during the Blitz  utterly palpable.

I am a big fan of the Irish actor Gabriel Byrne whose character is the commanding officer of the camp. He also co-produced this movie. Seeing how much fun he exudes playing this role one can easily assume that this was a movie that was very close to his heart.

I am very glad the directors felt compelled to tell this story of this quite exotic camp. It provides an interesting insight into Irish history for which I am glad.

Since this is really a feel good movie but far from being stupid entertainment you might really  enjoy watching it.

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Warlords (2007): So much better than expected

Warlords is a great movie. Far, far better than I expected. Not the usual at all. A wonderful example of Chinese cinema.

Gorgeous opulent pictures, a heartbreaking, thoughtful story, epic battle scenes, amazing landscapes, a very special atmosphere, poetical in tone, complex relationships and an excellent cast. Jet Li surprised me completely. I would never have expected him to be capable of such nuanced acting. Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro are superb as well and so is Jinglei Xu as Lian.

Set in 19th century China during the Taiping rebellion Warlords follows the destiny of General Pang (Jet Li). He is the only survivor of his unit ( thanks to a shameful act). All the others have been massacred. He finds refuge in the mountains among bandits and convinces their chief and his brother to follow him and become soldiers. The three men  who feel a very close bond early on take an oath to live and die for one another.

We soon follow them from battlefield to battlefield. Pang seems to have the highest moral standards that he manages to keep up even though they are constantly at war. But the longer the war lasts, the more it gets difficult for him to live up to these standards. Finally, in order to do a greater good, as he says,  he is willing to commit what one of the brothers sees as a crime. What started as a close friendship turns into the opposite developing a destructive dynamic. The core message of this film seems to be: War is ultimately ugly and nothing good can come out of it.

Warlords is really a story of Shakespearian proportions. It did also remind me of Greek tragedies. Only much darker. And still it is a compellingly beautiful movie.

Large scale cinema at its very best. I will definitely watch it again.