Love Hunter

What a wonderful movie! Love Hunter has so much heart. The main character, Milan, is very appealing, a genuine star. The story, the pacing, the cinematography, the tone of the film — it's all very accomplished. I found myself agreeing with Milan's philosophy of life-and-art, which is that if you try hard enough, luck will come. It is a way of saying: in this life, we make our own luck. The philosophical question is one about destiny. If you have talent (and like their main character, the young directors of Love Hunter most definitely do), then "success" will depend on how much drive you have. But "drive," surely, is a matter of fate or destiny. How much drive a person has is a question of individual character — which had me wondering: is "character" hard-wired in each of us by the time we are five years old? Freud says something like this in Civilization and Its Discontents, when he observes about "happiness": "There is no golden rule which applies to everyone: every man must find out for himself in what particular fashion he can be saved." The Bala brothers are to be congratulated! They capture something wonderful about New York as a great world city where the talented and ambitious come to seek and make their fortune. With subtle humor and observation, they explore that eternal challenge: how to find a balance between making art and having a life.

Sweet, good hearted micro budget drama based on the real life of it's lead Milan Mumin, who was a rock star in Serbia, but who makes a living driving a cab in New York. In this lightly fictionalized version of his life Mumin writes songs while driving his cab, and has saved up money to start recording an album just as his Serbian girlfriend comes to visit with the goal of getting Mumin to give up his ideas of glory in the US, and to come home and get a real job. At the same time Mumin is developing a crush on his new bass player, a flinty New York single mom.

But likable though it all is, a few things keeps this from succeeding on the same level as the somewhat similar 'Once'. First, the acting just isn't that great. There's a stiffness to the improvised seeming chatter, and a sense that in many characters we're watching amateurs in over their heads. Also – and this is personal taste – Mumin's US music just doesn't seem that great, his lyrics awkward and forced. For me that made it harder to all out invest in rooting for his success. And last, it feels a mite predictable, with characters staying pretty much to what we think they'll be. That certainly seemed to be the case for the Serbian girlfriend who is introduced as the sort of villain of the piece, unsupportive and selfish and basically stays there.

I like the main message of this movie: "Be persistent and follow your dream and if you don't quit it will become the reality". Milan is very charismatic in this movie, he did a great job, knowing that he is not an actor. He has a wonderful and unique voice and I really like the parts where he sings. Eleanor Hutchins is also great in this movie and the only character I don't like much is Lela (the way how Jelena Stupljanin is acting). This movie is a highly recommended, and it shows very nice the life of ordinary people in a New York. They are struggling but they believe that will be able to achieve their dreams. It is also an interesting story. Milan was a rock star in Novi Sad, Serbia, with his band "Love Hunters" (similarity with movie title "Love Hunter" is obvious) and when he came to New York he was nobody, just an on among others taxi drivers.