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På fremmed mark (2000)
A tense modern war drama AKA "Foreign Fields"
SYNOPSIS: (moderate spoilers ahead)
Pa Fremmed Mark, or "Foreign Fields" as it is known in its English language incarnation, is a tense, terse war drama set in the 90s Bosnian-Serb conflict.
We follow Jacob, a young Danish UN soldier posted to Bosnia, and learn that despite being a crack shot, he doesn't have the urge to kill.
His immediate superior is Holt, a more experienced soldier, who takes Jacob under his wing. Following an incident with a drunken Serbian who Holt shoots to save Jacob, the two become friends.
Holt invites Jacob away for a special leave weekend. The two travel deep into the Bosnian countryside, there meeting up with three foreigners who are flown in by chopper - A Swede, and Englishman and his German girlfriend.
Jacob soon learns that the three have made an arrangement with Holt to go incognito into Serbian territory - to kill for the thrill of it.
The film follows their "Holiday in Bosnia" as the plan goes terribly wrong, and we are drawn along to its inevitable conclusion.
REVIEW:
This film, despite obviously being fairly low budget, has a really dark and ominous atmosphere well brought about with muted colours and well shot scenery, and strong performances from its leads. The stillness of the wartorn countryside is the perfect frame for the brief but brutal acts of violence that come with its "mercenary tourists" theme.
The publicity tells us that it comes "From the Producers of Breaking the Waves", and like that film, the pacing could seem slow to those used to faster paced action films. But this movie doesn't really qualify as an action film - it's more a thought piece about the nature of power, corruption and the dehumanising effect of war.
"Pa Fremmed Mark" or "Foreign Fields" is one of the few films that explores the Bosnian war - not as an examination of the politics of it, but using it as a backdrop for the wider themes it attempts to explore.
THE LAST WORD:
This film will not be for everybody, but it is definitely worth a look if you like darker material. 7.5/10
Garage Days (2002)
Rock'n'Roll's not my cup of poison...
Ah yes, the rock movie. A painful genre that has rarely, if ever, found its feet (Exception: Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous").
Alex Proyas' latest flick is a brave attempt to capture the youthful exhuberance and excitement that goes with being young and hopeful in the music biz. Unfortunately for him and just about every other auteur attempting to crack this particular nut, they have no idea of what it is actually like.
I did enjoy parts of this film - Pia Miranda is always a pleasure to watch, and the rest of the cast did their best with a slightly ropey script. The noticable lack of original music from our heroes throughout the film was also a welcome relief (see "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" to discover just how annoying "written for screen" rock songs can be), and the surprise when they finally do play us a tune was, although telegraphed well in advance, at least a change on the old story.
Other parts of this film were just plain annoying, though. Has Proyas EVER been backstage at a large gig? His representation of the rock idols and managers would have been spot on in about 1976 - had they been Led Zeppelin or Iggy Pop. Not terribly modern, however. The drug scenes were exceptionally cliched, and here he has done his distributors a MAJOR disservice - the film's key demographic, teenagers will be unable to see it due to the explicit nature of these scenes. Nothing wrong with that, but it's all so, I dunno, "1990's".
All told, having heard bad things about this film, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Still, wait for the video (and then hire something else).
4.5/10