The Ambassador to Bern

The most interesting thing about this movie, IMHO, is that it allows you to view the situation mostly with dispassionate eyes. Sure, sure, the filmmakers really want you to take a side, to side with their agenda, but, honestly, who's ever heard of this particular event or has any strong opinions about it?

And so, truth be told, without a burning sense of injustice inside me, it's hard to sympathize much with the terrorists. I've seen this movie before, when it was called 6 Days. Another version is called Hotel Mumbai. A tangential movie is called Argo. In every case we were supposed to side against the invaders. This time round, we're supposed to side with them? It just doesn't work, not unless you are seriously invested in a particular version of Hungarian history.

So that's the politics out the way -- we can watch it nonpolitically. And, non-politically, it's not bad! Short as it is, it's still about 5 minutes too long (the last 5 minutes are especially clumsy and didactic), but before that it hits all the bases well. Not much time wasted before we get to the meat of the story, no time wasted on silly asides like cops struggling with addiction or ambassadors depressed by their divorce or the usual "human interest" crap that Hollywood likes to lard into so many movies of this sort. Mainly a reasonable depiction of events as they probably played out, along with an intelligent depiction of everyone's motives.

I think the biggest problem with the film is, that it is really made only for the Hungarian audience, as it requires some knowledge of the history of this nation. And even if you got this knowledge, the motivations of the characters are not really clear throughout the entire story. So the film is far from perfect, BUT apart from that, The Ambassador to Bern is a good, more than watchable movie in every aspect. János Kulka (as usual from him), gives a great performance as the title character, and the supporting actors are quite good too. It is basically a hostage drama, entertaining to almost everyone, and also pretty short, so definitely worth a watch, especially if you're a Hungarian or a fan of Hungarian movies.