Son's Will

A post-apocalyptic epic coming to the world from Serbia no less! A lot of motifs from the old Serbian heroic poetry, re-imagined in a new world that came out of nuclear war.

The main problem with the movie is that it isn't a movie at all. In Serbian cinematography they have this practice of creating a mini-series and also cutting it down into a movie for release in the cinemas. The Son's Will series is 8 episodes, 40 minutes long each. They had to cut it into 150 minutes movie that now simultaneously feels both too long and too short, as too much is crammed in with not enough exposure to explain all.

The scenes are very competently made and acted. A big issue is that the movie is very Americanized, not in the spirit of Serbian cinematography, so some dialogs and actions feel very cringey for domestic viewers, while I don't know how much it will appeal to international audience that has no idea what "gusle" is.

Since it is the first serbian movie of thing, I can give it three stars,otherwise,it hardly deserves one. The actors are average,the scenes and atmosphere are good,aometimes excelent,but the plot is so boring and fails to deliver at the end. Believe me,you will forget what the movie was about in two weeks,that is how faint impression it leaves. And when I think that I wanted to go to the cinema to watch it,what a waste of time it would have been!

This movie is significantly better than the director's last movie, and you can clearly see it.

The pacing is good, the movie never feels like its dragging along, the cinematography, music, and honestly most of the sets are really well done considering the monetary and location limitations, most important part is that cgi never really took me away from what was happening.

The world is interesting, and there is a lot to explore in it, but that's currently my biggest issue with the movie;

At some points of the movie we get lore dumps, to the point that you don't know whats happening and who's who, especially in the seed people backstory, the narrator doesn't help either - please don't ever use the narrator in a movie.

Despite what a lot of people say, the runtime is not too long, it just needed to be used better, the audience doesn't need to know everything, condense the story, only tell the most important details, or only show the stories important to the movie but do it properly.

Some actors were pretty bad, but they were not in the story for a long time so that makes it slightly better.

I have a lot more gripes with the movie and how it was made but you get the point.

All in all, the movie is a good stepping stone to an actually really good next movie from this team, and I'm actually excited for it.

Like sword ... like the same? Well no pun intended, though that is more for my summary headline. This is a postapocalyptic movie - from Serbia! It is quite violent, but nothing can shock anyone who may have seen a different kind of movie from Serbia (from 2010 that is).

There is also one actor who played in that movie and is back again for this one. He played a terrific villain back then - and he still got it. This builds quite the fantasy and mythology around itself and a certain sword. Mixing eastern tradition with western authoritarian and societal structures. Well you could do worse than watching this - especially considering how good it looks (and I don't necessarily refer to the actors, though they are a fine bunch of people too).

If you're thinking of watching this movie, it's a world you've already seen somewhere before, Into the Badlands (TV series), Mad Max 2 (1981), The 100 (TV series)... Old folk tales from Serbia, introduced into the post-apocalyptic future, give a special experience.

The scenery and costumes are irresistibly reminiscent of the aforementioned series, so the viewer will get the hang of it very quickly, but the problem remains the misunderstanding of the narrator with the instrument, which is characteristic of Serbian folk songs from the 16th and 18th centuries, so if you are not close to Serbian culture, this would be an obstacle in understanding the plot of the film.

In general, it is a big step forward in the Serbian film industry. It can always be better and there will always be critics with bad reviews. Considering that this is the first film made with this kind of theme in Serbia, we have to be more tolerant.