No Man's Land Review
by David N. Butterworth (dnb AT dca DOT net)February 26th, 2002
NO MAN'S LAND
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2002 David N. Butterworth
*** (out of ****)
It's been and gone but now it's back again, briefly and limitedly, on the strength of its Oscar® nomination for this year's Best Foreign Language Film (good luck going up against "Amélie" is all I can say).
The film is "No Man's Land," and whenever former documentary filmmaker Danis Tanovic's mordant satire keeps itself well and truly rooted in that middle ground, in that ambivalent, ambiguous wasteland between warring Serb and Bosnian forces circa 1993, it's engaging stuff, vibrantly written (by the director) and acted by Branko Djuric (as the Bosnian) and Rene Bitorajac (as the Serb), two men caught in the metaphorical and literal crossfire of a war torn Yugoslavia.
But in order to flesh out his story, Tanovic moves his players out of the trench and introduces us to characters that, frankly, don't have the zeal or the determination or the forbearance of our beleaguered leads.
There's a stiff upper-lipped British military bureaucrat (Simon Callow) who borders on caricature (right down to his long-legged secretary) and there's a stiff British news/media reporter (Katrin Cartlidge) who borders on cliché. The U.N. peacekeepers, with their white armored patrol vehicles and bright blue helmets are interestingly sketched but we want to get back to that no man's land, to that dugout parallel where the director understands his actors as well as his own blazingly good anti-war sentiment.
Ciki (Djuric) is part of a reconnaissance team that loses its way in the fog and winds up under heavy fire between the opposing forces. Nino (Bitorajac), a rookie soldier, is sent into the militarized zone to investigate, and soon a battle of words and will emerges between the two men who, at one time or another, hold the other at gunpoint. Adding to the tension is a third man, a colleague of Ciki's once feared dead, now lying on an unexploded land mine set by Nino's superior. Tanovic makes his political convictions clear, but it's fascinating watching a war waged between real people, with real ideals, than nameless, faceless adversaries.
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David N. Butterworth
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