Hungary has no Hollywood. Hungarian filmmakers are on a tight budget. Some YouTube enthusiasts can spend more bucks on their WW2 reenactment bullshit than a serious and talented Hungarian film crew on their vision. But this is also what we love in Hungarian movies. They have to strike a perfect balance between budget constraints and artistic qualities. Give too much money to a Hungarian studio and it's almost as bad as not giving anything. The best ones are always the ones on a budget.
Grey Nobodies is one of the most powerful Hungarian movies recently. It's a peculiar one already because there aren't many WW1 movies around. Trench warfare isn't very spectacular, it can't be made into flicks like The Longest Day or Saving Private Ryan. And what else can a WW1 movie tell about than trench warfare? On the other hand, what can any war movie possibly deliver which hasn't been delivered yet? Yeah, war is hell, people die, we get it, thanks... But Grey Nobodies not only strikes the sweet spot between budget and value, but masterfully delivers a war story which is unlike any other.
The cliché characters are there. The scared young rookie boy. The grizzled veteran commander. The cynical other veteran who just wants to survive. The coward. The enemy with a human face. Yeah, so?
It's the setting that makes this movie. It's the First World War, and it's the Italian front. A story Westerners rarely even know. The characters are storm pioneers on a secret mission; today we'd call them special forces, but at the time they were a unique and novel approach to warfare - specially trained and equipped soldiers, a possible solution to the stalemate, while the Allies came up with the tank. This is interesting, but still dull until the spice is added. And it's the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy itself, its peculiar situation at the time of the events, and its history and ethnography. The only army in which such a small team may consist of four different ethnicities, of which one is even supposed to be the enemy, a Romanian. All against the Italians and a communications outpost somewhere deep behind enemy lines.
No, you can't tell what is going to happen in the next moment. This is not your average war story. The only thing you know is that people will die. Who will and why, that's a mystery. The climax will leave you on the edge of your seat, and the ending is perhaps the most terrifying plot twist in any war movie ever.
This story can only work in WW1, and only with Austro-Hungarian soldiers. You can't adapt it to any other war, and not any other army. From the very first minute to the last, it's just great. There is no downtime, no empty clichés and no loose threads. The few shots fired do more justice than a whole battle scene with tons of explosives and spectacularly flying limbs.
This movie is not an experiment. It's a masterpiece, polished and shining. Well done! I'll recommend it to everybody who asks me about good Hungarian movies.
