It All Ends Here

Although not his best, Croatian director's Rajko Grlic's 12th feature-length film, announced as his final one (?), "It All Ends Here" ("Svemu dodje kraj") (2024), provides an exciting and believable story, thoroughly immersed in contemporary Croatian reality. Well-connected powerful people and their henchmen, corrupt politicians, sleazy lawyers who live on the scraps of other people's destroyed lives, unscrupulously playing with their leftovers, including their final act, death, these are all characters introduced to us daily via media. Real-life characters continue their lives here, in the movie, under their new fictional names. Written in collaboration between Grlic and the novelist Ante Tomic, "It All Ends Here" is an adaptation of Miroslav Krleza's (who is considered the greatest Croatian writer of the 20th century) novel "On the Edge of Reason," having its plot transferred from the year of 1938, when it was published, to the present day.

Despite not sticking up fully to established and strict genre rules (the film wavers between a political thriller and a crime story, between a love drama and a satire), but rather resorting to somewhat more down-to-earth exchange in love and/or adulterous relationships and clichéd, therefore popular didacticism elsewhere in the story, film will undoubtedly find a positive recognition among viewers sufficiently traumatized by the exact or similar everyday life in Croatia and beyond. Therefore, although with slightly reduced artistic pretensions, but this time with a clearly increased, genre-channeled appetite of a commentator on social happenings, the film functions quite sufficiently as an exhaust valve for the accumulated frustrations of (not only) the domestic audiences, especially with (for this author quite) an unexpected but by no means unwelcome (...omitting the spoiler making noun...) ending. The regional representative cast responded convincingly to challenges placed in the screenplay.

Svemu dodje kraj was a disappointment. I expected a gripping story, but the film is slow, predictable, and lacks originality. The pacing drags, making it hard to stay engaged. The characters feel shallow, and the dialogue often comes across as lifeless and uninspired. One of my biggest issues is Emir HadzihafizbegovicI've never liked him as an actor, and his performance here does nothing to change my opinion. He feels overdramatic rather than convincing. The plot doesn't build up to anything meaningful, and there's no real tension or excitement. Visually, the film is decent, but that alone isn't enough. Overall, it's forgettable and not something I'd recommend.