Svjedoci

I find it hard to believe that someone might give this amazing film less than an 8. If they do, it is undoubtedly either because they do not understand it, or for nationalistic reasons. Those who ascribe to a simplistic, black-and-white view of the war in Croatia will be disappointed with the grey in which Svedoci operates.

What Bresan achieves is a stunningly human portrait of the nuance between good and evil which predominates in times of war. From virtually every standpoint--artistic, technical, acting, musical--this film is astonishingly good. Though it is about the war in Croatia during the 1990s, the film's themes are relevant to virtually every civil conflict.

I highly recommend it to any serious cinemaphile.

the insanity of distinguishing a murder from war killing! is there a difference? is the nature of the crime different? isn't fear behind it all? bringing it's ugly cousins, prejudice, hate, pride and ignorance. All these forces working to break or compromise the good side of all of us. that's what the characters of this story are up against. The only redemption and hope in the story rests in the life of the young hostage. The three reckless soldiers, (street thugs with permission to carry automatic weapons) are left without any leadership and their best thinking leads to murder. they are as senseless as war it self. the story is set in a homeland war of Croatia. the difference in their army from conventional armies is that their squad consists of father and sons, brothers, friends and neighbors. i was relucxtant to view, but got it delivered through Film Movement as their pick of the month. i liked this film and it opened the door for me to be more willing to screen a lot more foreign films. they have any element that American films do not. cant quite put my finger on it yet.

Tough to digest movie. But it recalls very vividly the heaviness of war. It shows the gallery of characters who typically benefit from the war and also the ones who get lost in it. My favourite character is bartender Ljubo (Predrag Vusovic), disillusioned, "leave me alone" kind of person, who is very well embedded in the war economy. Kind of a survivor who hates the way his life still goes on. Some of the war scenes may seem shocking to the viewers who were lucky enough not to witness the war in their countries. But for the rest of us, they are very familiar. As for the technical part, the movie is somehow confusing with its back and forth story-line, and some of the acting is not always convincing, but all considered, it's still a great movie for vaccinating someone against military fever.

Nobody really cares that a low life gets killed, he isn't even shown in the movie, we are not supposed to care about him. Although we don't care about the witness as well, not supposed to by the director. And we continue with the same blunt tone set in the very beginning of the movie. The coldness towards the witness is surprising and unrealistic, no emotions shown throughout the movie.

Let's talk about the retrospective jumps. The story is one short happening over a couple of days timeline viewed from a few people's perspectives, which are overlapping as people are usually at the same place at the same time . Movie is kind of slow paced so this raises the movie dynamic greatly, unfortunately it gets a little bit confusing towards the end, and scenes are repeated too many times that it gets irritating. Except the main story line we get to see some pretty cool but unfortunately short retrospective, they don't add much to the story just to introduce characters and show us how they got here, (victim's and witness's unfortunately aren't shown).

The message? I don't think there is one, every character is a horrible human being except one that is just passive. You wait for something and get very empty ending. Like some politically correct story that still intended (by showing a few Croatian soldiers, while defending against Serbian invasion, as not so diabolic but cold and heartless people), and managed, to get people angry.

To be absolutely fair the reason to watch this movie is to see debut of a promising star Melody, her "out of this world" stunning performance alone is worth the watch. She was a baby then, but she is a babe now.

The story has potential... the suspense is there however the film had a lot of rough edges and there was too much drama.

The story is set in Croatia during the factional wars that broke out in the 1990s--Serbs versus Croats in this case. A murder is carried out and the only witness is a young girl--what will happen to her?

The film abruptly jumps back in time several times replaying everything but adding more details each time at first I thought it was a defective DVD... Have never seen that done before.

Instead of intellectual gimmicks like this the film maker should have concentrated on toning down the silly dramatic scenes ... they don't wash.

It comes off as a grade B movie with intellectual pretensions.

Hard to rate something like this except comparing it to other films from the region.. Klopka (Serbian) was much better. so this film gets 5 stars..although it will engage you it just needs more refinement.