mrzimpasulj

Novkovic-Markovic managed to deliver something that Serbian cinema needed so much: well written characters packed in a narrative that perfectly combines personal stories with a much bigger picture of a vanished country.

"Coffee and Kareem" disappointed us at the beginning of the pandemic, and now we have another title from Netflix that is basically the same movie, but they've added this little twist - it's not about your ordinary drug and an every day drug lord, but about a drug that gives you superpowers. But everything is pretty much the same. Even the little girl is "aspiring" rap artist. A couple of cool fighting scenes cannot carry the whole movie.

The story revolves around a mysterious figure that can grant any wish, and numerous people that are orbiting around him, intertwined by their own desires and Holy Grail agendas.

Sadly, you can figure out almost every character in the movie in about 15-20 minutes, making the rest of it's length redundant. If this was a short movie, it could have been interesting, but with this running time, it quickly becomes repetitive, predictable and it loses its pace; which is even more problematic considering that "The Place" is set in (no pun intended) only one place - a coffee shop named "The Place." This "mono-territory" would have been a less of a drag in a short feature; this way, it only slows it down even more.