Rane

Take `The Clockwork Orange', add `Trainspotting', add `Once Upon a Time in America'...Throw away all the cinema glamour. Add harsh reality. I do not know what you will get as a result and I can't promise you it will be something good. But if you are Srjan Dragoevic, you will get `Rane' and it will be breathtaking.

I've watched tonns of various movies - & felt like nothing could impress, thrill or shock me - till I've discovered Yugoslavian/postYugoslavian cinema. Black humor. Real passion. Authentic - might be the best definition. The characters are a l i v e and you just wonder how the director managed to put so much pieces of real life inside the picture. What other cinema schools tried to archieve through `experiments' - like Dogma for example - that is to say by inventing boarders, limits & rules for itself - those Yugoslavs did or do by working in often ordinary, may be even classic way - and the main trick is that they seem to have no boarders! The movies I've watched were dark but still they never lacked `lust for life'. Yugoslavian cinema seems to have national specific but always keeps in mind the best examples of European/American cinema. Almost all listed above refers to `Rane'. Mix `Trainspotting' with `Clockwork orange' add a little bit of `Once upon a time in America' & put it on the streets of Belgrade of the nineteth...Take two teenagers who do not know any reality except hatred, violence, crime & poverty - and put them inside the story. One of the most bizzare things for me was - how it reminds the Russia of the early ninteth - rapid inflation, depression & political madness. Two main characters are the guys from my area. It makes me wonder - why former Yugoslavian directors managed to make a number of brilliant movies - trying to expalin what is happening - during extremely hard times - while Russia hadn't already produced even a single good & honest movie about what is happening in Chechnya? Well may be one or two but it is still doubtfull. That's a shame.

Srdjan Dragojevic dedicates his film 'The Wounds' to "post-Tito generations," and it can be seen as of a piece with his previous film 'Pretty Village, Pretty Flame,' an allegory concerning the Bosnian conflict that was one of the angriest, most jarring anti-war films I've seen. 'The Wounds' is an even more aggressive film, told in non-linear fashion, like 'Pretty Village,' beginning in 1996, coiling five years back in time, and progressing to its starting point, so that the events that follow from thereon have an even greater immediacy. The storyteller is a young man named Pinki, born on the day of Marshal Tito's death, named such because his father was arrested after naming him "Tito" -- in honor of the fallen leader, but interpreted by authorities as an insult.

Pinki and his pal Kraut idolize a gangster known as Dickie, who lives in the same housing project. Dickie, an impulsive sociopath who carries a gun at all times and fires it into his television set at random, takes them under his wing and grooms them to become violent criminals. The film, by this point, may begin to remind a viewer of 'GoodFellas,' or the more current 'City of God,' from Brazil. But while those films were stylistically bold, this film is stylistically outrageous. Srdjan Dragojevic slings acid in the face of the viewer, forever surprising his audience with uncompromising nastiness. One does not grow inured to the shocks, however, because the shocks have poetry and relevance, and the movie is tremendously entertaining. This is very exciting filmmaking, the likes of which dwarfs recent work from American filmmakers like Scorsese and Tarantino. Furthermore, it's probably better than anything else from the arguably competitive recent spate of films from the former Yugoslavia, all of which yield a collective cry of anger in the face of the Bosnian civil war, the social conditions of that region, and the region's recent history.

Like other Yugoslav films, 'The Wounds' employs a burlesque tone in its depiction of sexuality, violence, social revolt, and family strife, and yet it does so with such conviction that the movie becomes hypnotic. It would be satire, except its anger is so palpable. It would be allegory, except its writing is so vivid. Whatever it is, it's not easily forgotten.

One of those in UR face, intense, violent pieces that U won't soon forget...tells the story of three youths and how their lives are shaped by their war-torn surroundings...never had any idea that this movie was going to be so RAW...whoa...a cross between "Natural Born Killers" and "Scarface"...

This film was my first exposure to life in Serbia – to life on a battlefield – after society and its rules have deteriorated to dust. Right and wrong yield to anarchy and savagery. It reminded me of William Golding's Lord of the Flies. At the end of the day, under the right circumstances, base human behaviors creep out. Morality comes from our environment. When civilization standards fall, values are lost. Citizens will degrade their fellow citizens to improve their own security, doing whatever they have to do. In Wounds, the surviving behavior emerges in the celebrated lifestyle of a gangster.

Pinki's narration is straight from the gut. He's 20 something at the end, and thinks of himself as an old man. The way he and kraut do the things they do, you just know they could get away with it.

It's a well told, thoroughly enjoyable Tour d'anarchy. Gruesome but real. 8.5 / 10.0

Dark, bleak, hopeless, harsh, uncompromising, periodically injected with black humor, but overall quite powerful - Srdjan Dragojevic's follow-up to "Pretty Village, Pretty Flame," weaves a tragic coming of age story in Yugoslav capital Belgrade during the turbulent 90's with all the sharp cultural, social, political references and critique one could ask for. This film actually fits more along the lines of "Cabaret Balkan," except that "Rane" has this gangster twist to it. Among the supporting actors I noticed a lot of familiar faces such as Miki Manojlovic, Dragan Bjelogrlic, Branca Katic, Nikola Kojo, who you may be familiar with from films like "Underground," "Black Cat, White Cat," above mentioned "Pretty Village, Pretty Flame" and "Cabaret Balkan" and such. Definitely recommended if you are interested in Serbia/Yugoslavia or Serbian film making.