Bet on Revenge

Kincsem an expensive film by European standards and it does not look cheap.

If you are a great movie fan and look for a great Hungarian movies, this may disappoint you, because "Son of Saul","White God", "On Body and Soul" won recently very high critical acclaim with a much lower budget, not to mention classics like "Time Stands Still". But "Kincsem" is not an art-house movie, it is suitable to any 16+ general audience.

If you are looking for a romantic thriller with a racing horse, this film is good, probably worth a 6-7 star rating. If you want to watch something Hungary-related that is also entertaining, this is probably your best choice, and worth a 8-9 star rating.

The racing scenes are great, the film is a bit unusually but well acted. The soundtrack is probably the weakest point, which alternating between original and bad (Hungarian) cliché.

The sound sound engineer is the worst all the time. The volume is loud and quiet in a sec. (In the Hungarian version.) The lighting technician is also bad but the original story is great.

This movie was very well-received in Hungary, but after the trailers I already knew that I won't pay for it. It just looked cheap without taste. The hype couldn't fool me. Tonight, when I saw it on HBO, I just... couldn't get it. How can people really like this film? It has such primitive angles and camerawork, like in a telenovella 10 years ago; a script is a hungarian fake historical soap opera; the costumes 'hungarosteampunk' or what - well, for the creativity I would give it a pass, if it didn't look soooo cheaaap, like made of plastik. The actors and actresses did what they could with the material, which of course couldn't be much.

Maybe the love for this film comes from sentimental patriotism, I can't believe anyone could seriously appreciate this fim, who isn't hungarian. The patriotism of the movie is so cheap and foced it is ridiculous - just like the austrians fake mustache, who are obviously the parody of themselves The only likeable charakter is the Horse, who is cool, because...horses are cool. You just can't mess up that one. Just everything else...

High budget, nice story, Hungarian patriotic emotions. and slices from XIX century in Austro - Hungarian Empire. the basic good point - the horse. maybe, the humor , too. a nice film. romanticism with soap opera taste, love, ambition, revenge. and decent performances. the basic rule - to not see it too serious. because, in many aspects, from the eccentricity to the poor Tsar, many aspects are jokes.and that make me nostalgic for the top Hungarian cinema before 1990. it is like the expensive wedding cake. the taste is not exactly the same like the aspect. or package. but my favorit are the leather jacket and hat. short, entertainment. a virtue who do not deserves be minimalized.

As a hungarian movie watcher I am supposed to like this. Problem is, I don't, even though I really wanted to. At first my big problem was the main male actor's leather clothes - they looked stupid. But I could let that go, and even though I couldve done without the dance scene (and the sunglasses too) I let that one go as well. But in the end, the movie could not overcome script problems, and the love between our heroes was as shallow as the hero's personality. I got really angry at the movie when there was animal abuse in it - if you have seen it you probably know what I mean... In the end they put in just about every hollywood cliche the could think of, not that it made it any better. Still, I've seen worse.