2021 - March
Quo Vadis, Aida (2020) 4/4
Headhunters (2011) 3.5/4
Nightwatch (1994) 3/4
Headhunters (2011) 3.5/4
Nightwatch (1994) 3/4
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- DirectorMorten TyldumStarsAksel HennieSynnøve Macody LundNikolaj Coster-WaldauAn accomplished headhunter risks everything to obtain a valuable painting owned by a former mercenary.14-03-2021
Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie) is a man trying to make up for his physical shortcomings. His short stature, his bulging eyes, his lack of charisma. Instead, he has the air of a man constantly trying to prove himself. He wears the best suits, drives the best cars, lives in a house well above his means, and is married to a supermodel whom he has to kiss on tiptoes. But despite his yearning for power and glamour, Roger Brown is no captain of industries. Due to some twist of fate, he's a headhunter, a recruitment agent, making the fortune of others, being left in the dust. But his apetites need feeding and his lifestyle does not come cheap. He has just bought his wife an art gallery to run and he's got his eyes on a pair of gorgeous earrings. After all, if he doesn't keep giving her things she'll leave him, right? So, Roger Brown becomes a thief. An art thief, more precisely. Stealing expensive but never priceless paintings from his ignorant clients who only possess them to seem more refined, more reputable. He replaces the paintings he steals with cheap copies and tellingly no one notices.
"Headhunters" starts off resembling many of its Nordic cousins. It has the same kind of atmosphere facilitated by glass-and-steel buildings erected in bleak landscapes populated by characters with psychopathic tendencies. However, the film, based on a novel by Jo Nesbø, quickly subverts our expectations and turns into a bizarre black farce after one of Roger's art heists goes wrong. Namely, he targets Clas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a former soldier, an expert tracker and cold-blooded killer, who also happens to be a tall, charming Adonis who doesn't take very kindly to being stolen from. Before you can remember where you've already seen this plot, Roger finds himself on the run, having to assume fake identities, hide pesky corpses, and jump into a septic tank in order to evade Clas who possess a Terminator-like determination to kill Roger.
In the end, "Headhunters" has less in common with "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" resembling instead what I imagine a collaboration between Danny Boyle and Michael Frayn might have looked like. And it is a fun ride. I am usually not one for twisty techno-thrillers preferring instead the quiet puzzle-solving of an Agatha Christie mystery, but "Headhunters" kept my attention. First, because it played fair, setting up its twists from the very beginning and not springing cheap surprises on us every few minutes. But mainly because it made me care. With all his character flaws, Roger Brown is a relatable figure. Someone whose feelings of lesser value we can all at least recognise. And someone who is just as confused and inept as most of us would be in this situation. He doesn't magically turn into Ethan Hunt when the going gets tough. He has trouble putting a corpse into the back of his car, he slips and falls while running through a field, and he winces when he shoots a gun. This is a lesson I hope Hollywood learns one day - we might like watching superheroes but you can only identify with real people. On the other hand, Clas is a formidable villain. Suave yet brutal, he wouldn't seem out of place in a James Bond film. All the genre tendencies of the filmmakers went into his character who is not as realistic as Roger but is just as fun to watch.
The film is directed by Morten Tyldum with the assured hand needed to guide us through Mr Nesbø's ludicrously complex plot. I have read the book and it is a great credit to Tyldum that I found the film clearer and more interesting to follow. Furthermore, Ulf Ryberg and Lars Gudmestad's script clears up many inconsistencies and altogether eliminates many of the things I found illogical or hard to believe in the novel. Rounding the fun out are John Andreas Andersen's cool cinematography and a pumping techno score by Trond Bjerknes and Jeppe Kaas neither of which are particularly original but are effectively utilised. It is, however, really the cast that makes the film and not just the excellent Aksel Hennie and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. I was also greatly entertained by Eivind Sander's brief but memorable turn as Roger Brown's sleazy partner-in-crime Ove.
3.5/4 - DirectorJasmila ZbanicStarsJasna DjuricicIzudin BajrovicBoris LerAida is a translator for the UN in the small town of Srebrenica. When the Serbian army takes over the town, her family is among the thousands of citizens looking for shelter in the UN camp.16-03-2021
Four men are sitting in a small, dark room. Two are in uniform, two are not. Two speak, two do not. They are all smoking. No, not quite smoking, they are all clutching at their cigarettes like dying men to final straws. Sucking at them with desperate, dying breaths. Moving them around in their mouths aimlessly. They have a good reason to be tense.
The two speaking men are the mayor of Srebrenica (Ermin Bravo) and the UN commander, Colonel Karremans (Johan Heldenbergh). The year is 1995. The Serbian forces are at the gates. The mayor is asking for assurances. Karremans gives him evasive answers. The mayor wants to know what the UN will do. Karremans speaks of an ultimatum. The mayor is not convinced, but there is nothing more he can do but plead and threaten. "You will be accountable," he says to Karremans, "if the Serbs enter the town". Karremans raises his hands in the air. "I am just the piano player".
As the conversation heats up, the only woman in the room, the interpreter, struggles to keep up. Emotions are high and bleak prophecies and empty promises abound. She tries to keep her cool, but she too is clutching at her cigarette, sucking in smoke between translations. Her name is Aida (Jasna Djuricic).
This scene alone is charged with nervous energy and sizzles with a kind of intensity very few recent films from the former Yugoslav republics manage to generate in their whole runtimes. The film grabs us in its opening minutes and never lets go marching us through the tragic events of the following two days leading up to the Srebrenica genocide.
Director Jasmila Zbanic follows the events with the kind of clinical precision and procedural pace Gilo Pontecorvo's legendary "Battle of Algiers" had. She focuses on minute details, day-to-day activities of the UN forces, and Aida's struggles to survive and save her husband and two sons from almost certain death. Zbanic recognises that her story is not melodrama, it is a massacre. Her film avoids the emotional trickery and the cheap symbolism so emblematic of lesser films that have previously dealt with the Bosnian War such as Angelina Jolie's almost self-parodically sincere "In the Land of Blood and Honey". Instead, she shows us precisely what happened, how it happened, and who is responsible for it happening, and by doing so makes us feel as if we are there, seeing the horrors of war for ourselves.
She smartly uses Aida, a Srebrenica schoolteacher assisting the UN forces as an interpreter, as our guide through the film. First, because Aida is one of the few characters on the ground who can talk with the victims (the townspeople of Srebrenica all of whom she seems to know by name), the perpetrators (the Serbian soldiers some of whom are her former students and neighbours), and the so-called UN peacekeepers. Second, because as a mother and a wife, she has very high personal stakes in the story. Throughout the film, Aida will try to balance her duties as a family woman and a UN employee, trying to find a way to get her family out of Srebrenica while she is forced to watch passively as her employers basically hand the town to the Serbs on a silver platter.
Interestingly, it is the UN forces who seem to be the focus of Zbanic's ire and rightly so. Led by the fretful and ineffective Karremans they are easily manipulated and intimidated by the oncoming Serbian forces. Ordered by their superiors not to interfere, they weakly try to protect the people of Srebrenica with big words and attempts at diplomacy, but it's all in vain. When the Serbian army begins packing people away into buses heading towards an unknown location, Karremans, on the edge of tears, locks himself into his office refusing to speak to anyone leaving his second-in-command, the stoic Franken (Raymond Thiry) to apologise for his mess and stutteringly turn a blind eye to the war crime going on before him.
All the while, Aida keeps running, literally, begging for help, but no help is to be found. Karremans won't speak to her, Franken is following orders, and the Serbs are playing coy, promising safe passage to the civilians while shooting people within an earshot of the so-called UN safe zone.
Zbanic's film is electrifying, horrifying, and unforgettable. It is the best film about the Bosnian war since "Pretty Village, Pretty Flame". It doesn't quite succeed in evoking the zeitgeist as well as Dragojevic's film, but it manages to do something even more effective. It evokes the hopelessness of the situation, the insanity, and the taste of fear. It puts us so vividly in Aida's shoes that by the time she stopped running, I was out of breath. It makes us asks ourselves what would we do in a situation like this. I don't have an answer.
Occasionally, "Quo Vadis, Aida" slips away from its strict realism. Even in those moments, which could have so easily seemed redundant or cheap, it is deeply harrowing. In one such flashback, a pre-war party turns into a Bergmanesque dance of death as we watch the happy faces of all those we just saw get killed. Most effective, however, are the closing shots. Close-ups of children performing in a school play. As we watch their happy faces we hope they can do better than we did.
Most of the time, wisely, the film does stick, in an almost documentarist fashion, to the nitty-gritty of what happened in those 48 hours. Whole scenes are recreated from historical footage and lines taken from actual conversations led 25 years before. Most of these scenes revolve around the Serb commandant, General Ratko Mladic played in an imposing, intimidating fashion by Boris Isakovic. He shows up only a few times in the film but displays such force and command that it is easy to see why there is so much fear in the faces of his victims.
However, this is Jasna Djuricic's film, and she steals it all the way through. It is heartbreaking to watch the extents to which her soft-spoken, unimposing character will have to go to save her family. In one of the final scenes, in which Aida literally begs Franken for help on her knees, the sheer ferocious energy emanating from this woman is awe-inspiring. However, she is best in the few quiet moments she's given. The scene in which she looks on in horror as her people are being herded like cattle into buses. The scene in which she can't bring herself to translate Franken's order for her friends, neighbours, family members to surrender themselves to the Serbs. The scene in which she tries to calm down her frantic and terrified young son.
This is, of course, not meant to disparage the truly wonderful supporting cast. On the Bosnian side, Izudin Bajrovic exudes a kind of quiet dignity in the face of terror as Aida's doomed husband and the virtuoso Ermin Bravo gives a sadly brief but powerful turn as the town's caring mayor. The film also has a sizeable and uniformly excellent Dutch cast with Johan Heldenbergh's weasely yet deeply felt performance as the hapless Karremans being the standout of the film. Also worth noting is the work of Reinout Bussemaker as the friendly and world-weary army doctor.
Unlike the clumsy and overly sincere war movies that have come from the former Yugoslav republics in the past two decades, "Quo Vadis, Aida" doesn't lead us by our hands to emotions. It's not emotionally manipulative. It's not cheap. It instead puts us in the shoes of its main characters by bringing to life the atmosphere of the situation and every minute detail which surrounds them. It is so evocative, life-like, and powerful, that it truly made me experience a fraction of the horror that was Srebrenica. It is by no means a pleasant experience, but certainly one worth going through. And it achieves all of this without spouting political slogans, sinking to propaganda, or tugging undeservedly at our heartstrings. I wish more Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian directors would possess the kind of restraint and intelligence that Jasmila Zbanic displays in her handling of this story.
4/4 - DirectorOle BornedalStarsNikolaj Coster-WaldauSofie GråbølKim BodniaA law student starts working as a night watchman at The Department of Forensic Medicine in Copenhagen. His mad friend gets him on a game of dare that escalates. As a serial-killer's victims start piling up at work, he becomes a suspect.20-03-2021
Even if you didn't like his debut film, you have to give director/writer Ole Bornedal one thing. He plays very deftly with our inborn fear of death. Most of "Nightwatch" is set inside a morgue, its long, sterile hallways a perfect setting for a spooky thriller. As our hero, the hapless new nightguard Martin (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), sneaks through the labyrinthine corridors, his footsteps echo through the dead silence. In these scenes, Bornedal perfectly evokes the unnatural stillness usually associated with death. The shots are composed in such a way that besides Martin nothing else seems to be moving. The silence is deafening as we hear nothing besides the echoing footsteps and Martin's heavy breathing. "I can hear the blood rushing through my head," says another character upon visiting the eery morgue.
The atmosphere Bornedal establishes early on in "Nightwatch" is what carried my interest through some of the film's weaker moments and it is, in fact, the most memorable aspect of this film which eventually boils down to an entertaining but achingly familiar thriller formula.
Martin, a law student, takes the night guard job hoping for a few quiet nights to study, but his hopes are soon quashed when a serial killer begins filling the morgue with fresh corpses of scalped prostitutes. And as if that wasn't scary enough, the killer is not quite done with them and soon Martin begins finding evidence that he's breaking into the morgue and doing unspeakable things to the corpses lying there.
But who is the killer? Martin begins suspecting his best friend Jens (Kim Bodnia), a fellow student with something of a drinking problem and a perchance for wild nights of partying. At Jens' suggestion, the two are involved in a game of dare, the loser of which will have to marry his girlfriend. The dares are initially good-natured. Martin dares Jens to insult a pair of thugs at a bar. But soon, the stakes begin to rise, especially after Jens dares Martin to cheat on his girlfriend with a prostitute who later turns up in his morgue, scalped.
"Nightwatch" is one of the earliest Nordic Noir films to reach an international audience, but it has far more in common with Kevin Williamson's horror films then Henning Mankell's moody police procedurals. In fact, I would have happily called it a "Scream" rip-off had it not been released two years before. All the ingredients are there: a group of horny students, a gruesome serial killer, a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour, and a certain self-awareness that frequently tips over into self-parody. After a corpse Martin sees lying in the hallway of the morgue disappears after he calls his boss to see it he remarks "This is like a scene out of a bad horror movie". Later on, he tells Jens: "If they ever make a film out of our story, I bet they'll call it 'Nightwatch'", further adding, "We're so predictable".
However, as with most of its elements, "Nightwatch" simply doesn't go far enough with this genre-busting self-referentiality. Unlike "Scream" which worked brilliantly as both a straightforward slasher film and a satire on the genre, "Nightwatch" never quite works as either constantly flip-flopping between knowing winks and attempts at serious scares. But Bornedal fails to fully capitalise on the spooky atmosphere he establishes. The film is frequently unnerving but is never genuinely frightening. The killer, when he eventually shows up, is cartoonish and more goofy than threatening. There is a disappointing lack of suspense scenes (we only ever see the killer at work once), and most of the film focuses on Jens and Martin's game of dare instead of building up a sense of imminent danger and mystery.
And speaking of mystery, the identity of the killer is disappointingly predictable. We are simply not given enough credible suspects for there to be any reasonable alternative to the obvious. Not that "Nightwatch" ever really plays on its mystery angle, forgetting it somewhere along the way.
Ole Bornedal, like a lot of debutants, packs his film with a lot of elements and subplots without really committing fully to any of them leading to a film that feels aimless and meandering. There is no real narrative propulsion behind the plot and its characters never undertake any actions until the climax. Martin never does anything to solve the killings, Jens never does anything to prove himself innocent, and the killer never seems to target Martin considering him more a slight nuisance than a genuine threat. None of the characters in "Nightwatch" is in the least bit proactive, letting events take place around them without ever trying to figure out why.
But, as I said in the second paragraph, the palpable atmosphere in the morgue scenes held my interest all the way through. I also enjoyed the performances from the four leads, the two men and their girlfriends, the liberal-minded Kalinka (Sofie Gråbøl) and the church-going Lotte (Lotte Andersen). Much as in a Kevin Williamson film, a lot of the fun comes from their believable and witty interactions and some of the most memorable scenes in "Nightwatch" are not related to the serial killer plot but rather to these four friends goofing around. Especially entertaining is the scene in which Lotte tries to get a hungover Jens to take communion. Suffice to say, it doesn't go according to her plan.
I also liked Ole Bornedal's stylish direction which seems to have taken more than a few cues from Gialli. The climax especially seems to be inspired by this Italian take on the serial killer subgenre. As the killer wreaks mayhem on the morgue, the thus-far sterile atmosphere becomes downright expressionistic as red and blue lights begin dominating the colour palette and fake blood stains all the walls in grotesque spurts. Any realisation on behalf of our leads is underlined by a dramatic zoom right into their eyes. Bornedal is no Mario Bava but he's stealing from the best.
Even with all of its flaws, "Nightwatch" is a fun watch. It lacks tight pacing, a suspenseful storyline or a threatening villain, but it more than makes up its lacking thriller elements with a good sense of humour and a likeable cast, as well as a spooky, deathly atmosphere which is so palpable it is a shame the film never capitalizes on it.
3/4