Travelator

Travellator tells the story of a young man called Slovene (a person from Slovenia, not Slav as other people have called him) who lives a hard life in Serbia mostly playing violent video games. He and his mother are refugees from the civil war who still live in a refugee shelter, and she is very ill and needs money for treatment. One day Slovene meets some mobsters, who claim to be Serbian patriots but speak a Scandinavian language among themselves. The mobsters hire him to travel to Las Vegas and kill one criminal from Serbia. This criminal was in Whitness Protection Program but got expelled from it due to reckless behavior, so now he spends his last days in the Sin City partying with 2 Serbian government officials before returning to his homeland. Slovene spent his whole life in great poverty, so he gets easily drawn to the luxurious life in Las Vegas, an amazing city that seems like an artificial paradise. He also meets a young stripper Weronika who quickly falls in love with him.

The scenes in the movie have a non-linear order, similar to Reservoir Dogs. Most of the scenes in Las Vegas were shot in guerrilla style, which means that the film crew filmed on the streets without any permissions next to crowds who were unaware of being filmed. The result is visually superb and efficiently captures the wanted atmosphere. The streets and casinos of Las Vegas look marvelous, full of surreal colors. These scenes contrast with those set in Serbia, a poor country full of dark and shabby locations. In the end of the movie, the real life violence starts to look like a first-person shooter game. All in all, the aesthetic side of the movie is excellent for an indie film.

However, the movie also has plenty of flaws. There are too many religious motives; most notably when the imitators of Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Tina Turner all quote the Book of Revelations. This is interesting at first, but becomes boring when they start just repeating the same verse for no special reason. Slovene's mother is also very religious, so she has a lot of unoriginal religious messages to share, which seems quite dull. Most of this is not really important, but there is one major plot hole that bothered me. The most important event of the movie, the actual assassination, is planned extremely badly and without any logic. The target, after all, is just a stupid old fool guarded by his equally stupid friends, so they spend all their time having careless fun in public places. Anybody could have just shot this fool from a car while he was clumsily walking down a street. But instead, Slovene just observes his target for many days and eventually chooses probably the worst possible place for a murder. I am not going to spoil the ending, but I will just say that Slovene gets attacked by some private security and a bunch of cops because of his horrible plan.

Finally, I must admit that I liked the movie. There may be some dull and slow-paced parts, but I've seen many high-budget action movies that are way more boring than Travelator. The movie has a lot of originality and interesting moments, especially those showing the "beauties" of decadent Las Vegas.

Travelator is one of those movies that screams for a big-budget Hollywood remake. I'm not sure whether that was its sole purpose, yet it turned out to be a fine thriller painting its picture with limited yet powerful means. Although it contained a lot of commonplace and even prejudice they were all put to good use.

The main protagonist is a youngster living in Serbia earning his living as a "freelancer" in what is clearly the dark side of grey economy. In his spare time he excels in gaming, in particular first- person-shooters. After some consideration he accepted the job that should change his life for better and visit paradise on earth, as the new "employer" asserted.

As the movie would show, the main protagonist took literally the notion that Las Vegas is the place where dreams come true. Where would that lead him remains to be uncovered towards the finale.

What impressed me the most is that Travelator has a whole level of the story presumably invisible to the average viewer not versed with the part of the world where Serbia is located.

The main protagonist holds a Slovenian passport which allowed him to enter the US without a visa. I guess the concept of a visa is vague to a lot of Western viewers. He lives with his mother in a temporary housing for refugees, almost two decades after the wars that brought them there ended. His new "employer" looks rather low key, although his ties seem to reach all over the globe etc.

What worked well is how some aspects of life on both sides of the Atlantic are the same.

For example, the main protagonist's mother in Serbia clings to her faith in God because all other options proved useless. Manic street preachers in Las Vegas are fervent believers although it is hard to understand what brought them to their occupation in an environment in which dreams of all sorts may come true.