Zwolnieni z zycia

I enjoyed watching "Zwolnieni z zycia" (Dismissed from Life) more than I expected. I watched this Polish-French production because of the participation of many famous actors and to look at the turn of the 1980s/1990s in Poland, as I was an emigrant in the US at that time. The film really drew me in and seemed to me to be a distant cousin of "Witness" from 1985 with Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis, which also had a theme of hiding from persecutors in an unusual environment. The glimpse of the beginning of the political transformation in Poland was very interesting to me, with its grey streets without advertisements and improvised markets on the streets. The action kept me in suspense until the end, and I felt sympathy for the main characters played by Jan Frycz and Krystyna Janda. The acting was of a high standard, and one can understand why Jan Frycz became a star of Polish cinema. Besides, this film also showed that you don't need a lot of shootings and dead bodies to make a gripping thriller.