Hostage

Having previously enjoyed Constantinos Giannaris's 'From The Edge Of The City', flawed though it was, I imagined this film might represent a coming to fruition of this director's potential.

Alas, this film fails on all fronts. Neither dramatic enough to constitute a drama nor thrilling enough to be considered a thriller, the pacing is lethargic and there's barely a soupçon of suspense throughout. Character development is limited, and, even where attempted, ultimately uninvolving. This is not helped by the director's tiresome insistence on casting Stathis Papadopoulos purely on the basis (it seems) that the actor is extremely buff. I don't know about you, but I often find it quite helpful if an actor can act.

The depiction of the racism and xenophobia that lurks beneath the surface of contemporary Greece is perhaps the most interesting aspect of a film that offers no other message and little by way of entertainment.

Jesus. What a bore. This film is even worse than Romanian films (give or take one or two). The photography sucked big time (I think they shot it on digital format, you can almost tell by the plain two-dimensional shots, unimaginative hand held's, and dull colors - and don't tell me that's bleach-by-pass). I do know the Balkans are a very troubled region, where deep-seated xenophobia and nationalistic behavior make victims each and every year, yet this film didn't quite grasp that. The film is detached, not in a Michael Haneke way, but in a most tiresome unmoving manner, treading its way down the sunny slopes of Greece at a snail's pace, although it wants to mislead us into believing that what we're dealing here with is a thriller. The acting was so awful that I thought they had some b-series/ sitcom/ soap opera actors memorize some lines and deliver them in a very flat voice. As for the love making scene between the Albanian would-be hunk and the would-be steamy Greek woman (huh, forbidden love), I deem it less sexy than an Orthodox monastery dormitory. And despite the camera that was all-go (hand-held, because it's easier and cheaper than to use camera grip equipment), the story was so all-stand-still that I couldn't take it. Maybe some Western Europeans could find interesting this wanna be larger-than-life drama set in present day Greece, where the bad guy comes from Albania, living up to his stereotyped status, and the people on the bus are so afraid of him that they're a couple of beers short of joining him into a dance, accompanied by live guitar. You know, like we'd do in elementary school, till the driver'd shoot us off.

I'm voting a 9, because it's a convincing, good film. But as far a it being a true story.... not exactly. I was in Greece on vacation in 1998 when this happened. At the time; Albanian refugees were living in Greece. Greeks felt sorry for them, as they do for so many others;( their biggest downfall), and allowed them into their homes, jobs, lives... and in return they robbed banks, killed their hosts and terrorized the country. This movie portrayed the situation as an innocent, good-looking boy treated as a slave in Greece. With a bus full of Stockholm syndrome victims!! And done so well; I almost fell for it. I heard the entire thing live on the radio; this bastard shoved the grenade in the lady's pants and threatened to pull the pin for hours; and then finally did.

Giannaris contributes one to the "hostage" film genre. I completely disagree with the other views expressed thus far, in that I found the film quite paced and engaging and his use of Stathis Papadopoulos as intuitively right. Describing him as "extremely buffed" is a bit hyperbolic. Stathis is no Arnold (thankfully) and can convey emotions missing from most action heroes/antiheroes--e.g., uncertainty, fear, and a childlike vulnerability next to the women who briefly mother him in the course of the film. Here's an inarticulate character who can't fully think things through, is in over his head, and yet desperate enough to make a last futile stand to be counted.

And like all hostage films, it's not just about the captor but the captives. Kudos to the rest of the cast for their very believable performances that dynamically reveal their personal stories in the course of the journey and their changes in perspective on their collective situation and its significance. As one character says to the morally ambiguous cop-negotiator trying to get some of them released, "It's all of us or none of us." Kudos also to the cinematography that conveyed the overheated claustrophobia of a long bus ride that spans day and night and builds to its visual payoff in the climactic final moments.

I recently saw this film at a festival of Greek culture in London and unfortunately it had quite the opposite effect that the event intended, presenting modern Greece as a divided wasteland in a way that Giannaris seems to enjoy.

As you can tell I'm not a fan of this man's work. Although most of his films demonstrate competence they never rise above their petty desire to appeal to the international market that Giannaris so obviously craves. To make matters worse he has insisted on casting his 'From the Edge of the City' boy-toy Stathis Papadopoulos in his recent films. The boy cannot act, and has about as much menace as a slightly cheesed-off male model. I think cinema has had enough of 'non-professional' casts being used as a means of supposedly adding 'realism' to a film. Drama schools exist for a reason.

Ultimately, this film is a great disappointment. Especially considering the potential of the storyline.