Niciji sin

I had to see absolute winner of Pula Film Festival (best director,actor,music...) so I had high expectations about this one and I must say that I'm not disappointed at all. Since I also saw play "Niciji sin" from Vinko Brešan in theater in Rijeka, I was familiar with the script.

In short description, this movie is about Ivan, ex-singer and war veteran who lost both legs in war. Ivan also has to face with his broken marriage and son that he doesn't see. Ivan has no future, just like lot of his colleagues from war (who either kill themselves or end up in institution). His father, Izidor is political candidate and he wants to win on elections desperately. His campaign is disturbed when Serbian refugee Simo comes to his house and starts to blackmail him. Soon, all secrets will come out.

This movie is very interesting to people from this areas, who are familiar to events that happened in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia during the war and after it. Foreigners who are not familiar with situation here in the war can easily learn something about it because the whole point of the story is about ex-soldiers who have obvious problems from war, and no one can help them. They are left to die alone and misunderstood (same story with American soldiers in Iraq - greatly told in "In the Valley of Elah"). Also I have to say that Ostojic movie is better then Bresan play because it's deeper in characterization (ironical parts are strong in both play and movie). Events are told retrospectively and the whole movie is carried by Alen Liveric in the main role. Liveric is brilliant and this is definitely the best acted role in Croatian movie for 2008. Liveric has support from legendary Mustafa Nadarevic and actors like Biserka Ipsa, Zdenko Jelcic, Goran Grgic and others. Everyone is great in their roles and I think this is the best Croatian movie in 2008. "Niciji sin" is Croatia's 2009 Academy Awards official submission to Foreign-Language Film category and it fully deserved that because it's a story about a family that is condemned to doom cause of stupid war. Recommended, especially for audience who likes festival types of movies rather then blockbusters with no brains.

Throughout the years I've seen comments that considered the film worse than the director's first and third film. However, I find that undeserved and this film to be equivalently strong. It simply kept me interested all the way. Unlike what I've seen some critics say, I enjoyed that the tragic situations weren't attempted to be lightened by some comedic elements but instead stayed closer to aspects that can be found in tragedies from antiquity. As the protagonist questions his identity (played nicely by the main actor), we can be inspired to question some of our own beliefs, which is the best thing I can ask from a film.

I watched this movie rather late in 2020 even so it is from 2008, the reason for that was simply because i watched more recent war-themed croatian movies which where underwhelming so i was keeping an eye out if i could find something that is actually good for croatian standards, and i did like this for the most part except the last third was very very constructed, especially the end.

Niciji sin has great cinematography for croatian standards and the few war-scenes were more believable than what i have seen recently (considering that this movie is by the time of reviewing already 12y old).

Actor Alen Liveric is awesome, great performance while all other actors are good too but basically play themselves like they do in other movies. But Liveric is really memorable in this one. Playing an ampute that lost both limbs was very well solved in this movie, considering that VFX is not croatian movies strongest side, here they solve it very good with a camera angles, a body double and a single vfx-shot to make it believable enough.

This movie is a one-time-watch drama, i dont compare it to movies from 2020 hence my rating is more like if i had seen it in the year of its making in comparsion to all other croatian movies of that time.

warning: if you are looking for a patriotic croatian war movie, this aint it !!!