Infamousta
brilliant actors, brilliant editing
Nicole
I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
Zandra
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
dromasca
The US and NATO war in Afghanistan did not generate yet too many movies. Certainly, not many good movies. A few war and B-series films dealt with the conflict in a one-sided manner, focusing on the action, demonizing or at best not dealing with the other side but in a very schematic and generally negative manner. Very few dealt with the dilemmas and traumas of the warriors, or of the families back home. The other side was again absent, a far menace at best. Essential Killing - an European co-production directed by Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski with a couple of well known French actors in the lead roles comes from a very different perspective. So different that it falls in the other extreme, and the result is in my opinion a failure.Let me start with the good things about this film. It's cinematography is very expressive and fits quite well the subject and the action. A Taliban prisoner is captured by the American or NATO forces after killing three soldiers. He is interrogated with brutality, and then taken aboard the plane to another country, supposed European, certainly with harsh winters and very different from the hot desert he dreams to while fighting for his life. The frozen forests, the orange and white uniforms, the silhouettes of the soldiers, the dogs and the wolves, all fit well. One can wonder what actors like Vincent Gallo and Emmanuelle Seigner do in such a film, but they are here and they do well their job. If 'Essential Killing' was only a survival story, it would have worked, although some details are not completely clear (how does exactly the running prisoner escape the wolves? we just see him walking free after a scene in which he seemed to be turn into pieces by a hoard of about six beasts).The problem is that 'Essential Killing' tries to be more than a survival story in in what it selects to show and what it selects not to show. Yes, the brutal methods of interrogation are repulsive, and transporting prisoners in other countries without a judgment may be against the international laws. Yes, even the harsher enemies are human and they have their dreams and they fight for their lives. Human solidarity also works beyond language or cultural barriers. This is fine as well. However the one sided view of the conflict in which the bad guys are 'humanized' to the edge of idealization (dreaming about the beautiful woman covered by the celestial blue burka, come on!) and the good guys are demonized (did not the three soldiers killed in the opening scene have their dreams too?) can work only for people who landed from another planet or are truly convinced that the Taliban are the good guys and the ones fighting them are the opposite. 'Essential Killing' may tell some kind of a partial truth, but partial truths are often indistinguishable from lies.
pantagruella
I don't have a lot to say about this excellent film. I do take issue with one reviewer who said that it was deadly serious. I was laughing for most of the journey. It's like a silent film with much slapstick. It's a brave film and I imagine they only showed it in about four cinemas. The same thing happened to Postal. What a world we live in! It might have been kinder for the hero to have been picked up by the Spanish Inquisition. I look forward to more films from the viewpoint of the Taliban and other naughty insurgents. They certainly have a tale to tell. This is a surprising film. I didn't expect it. The people behind it went to a lot of trouble. Photography is superb. Production values are high. Three cheers to everyone involved. But it is funny. Very funny.
jake4444
A visionary and masterful film. There is a story, it just isn't told in the same stock way. I think the story is a poetically-told and profound one. If you want Rambo and sneer at the idea of an "art film", then skip it. You won't know how to watch it and your commentary will be misplaced. If you understand that politics is elemental, consequential, and, yes, essential, and is more than ideologies and labels and bad guy verses good guy frames of reference, you could get something out of it. If you understand that politics isn't just parties or campaigns, but that 95% of it is what people don't see and don't ever know, you may like it. If you understand that politics is really (or had better be) ultimately about the planet, other life forms, seeing people whole, and each man's soul, or at least have an open mind to seeing a more encompassing view of "politics", you might like it. Skolimowski's best, in my opinion, and that says a great deal.
scd20
A Taliban combatant is captured after he kills three American soldiers. We learn little of his backstory -- who he is, or why they find him in Afghanistan's mountainous tribal regions -- but he is captured by American soldiers and shipped off to Poland. He finds himself in a region that is as forbidding and isolated, but more alienating and unfamiliar than his home. When a prisoner convoy gets into an accident, a chase ensues, and the audience, placed within the perspective of the capture, follows his efforts to escape and survive. So much is shown and so little told in this film, we ponder whether to fear or loathe our protagonist. The film is entirely shot from the escapee's perspective, so his is all we have. What are his pursuer's thinking? We don't know in this spare narrative of survival. Where is he? What is a frozen lake? What can he possibly eat to survive. In this alpine nowhere, all of these questions loom ominously and this film.
