Kobry a uzovky

All aspects of this movie are average at best, which sends the effort of seasoned authors into the realms of desperate mediocrity. The outcome is a bundle of rather incoherent sketches, that leave a mild smile on your face that soon vaporises along with a rather hazy memory of the movie as a whole. And in a week's time you might be asking yourself, what was it all about? Where your chum might remind you of an entertaining front-seat self-abuse scene. Indeed a quality farce for medieval peasants it is. If you hope for more, you could be disappointed. To make my review eligible, I am asked to pad the text with junk words. I am sure the authors meant well. But I also believe, the thought or the intended absence of the same lies at the heart of any art piece. Usually this thought serves as a building ground for the story. Trying to make a story, though entertaining, in hope that the absence of the ground will not be palpable or the audience will make up one of their own, is quite naive and a sure recipe for a disaster. Also one would expect this kind of approach in a prepubescent author, rather than a mature experienced one. Let us hope their next endeavor will be better prepared and exercised. For their own benefit, as uncanny support of mass-media can help only so much

I felt empathy and fear with a sense of unavoidable collisions as the film follows the lives of two brothers in the Czech Republic. The adult siblings carry the scars of their upbringing by a mother who gave up on providing any emotional support.

The story unfolds in a mid size Czech town where the brothers are well known in the working class community as they drift aimlessly. The younger brother suffers from a mental illness, moving from one theft to another to feed his drug addiction. His older brother usually bails him out but there is a fine line between unconditional love and loathing. They make instinctive choices and you just have the feeling that they are heading towards trouble. When confronted with a calamity, you don't know if they will affirm the principles of a family sticking together.

The gritty acting is excellent, with a realistic dialog and subtle touches that really convey the atmosphere. It is a comedy, a love story, a social drama that exposes many emotions, moral dilemmas and provokes many questions.

Well worth watching.