Metastaze

A Croation drama taking place shortly after the Balkan War, Metastaze is a grim and dark look at humanity. Zagreb is the setting, as four friends who share in common their love of the local football(soccer) team. Krpa is a rowdy guy who abuses his wife and fights constantly, and is also a thief who robs stores. He is the first of the wonderful people portrayed.

Filip has just returned from drug rehabilitation in Spain, and his parents attempt to convince him to find a job to stay out of trouble. He would rather hang out in a bar with his friends.

Kizo is a drunk who lives with his mother. His father is dead and he is shown buying beer and cat food and feeding a litter of kittens. Peta would love this man.

The last winner is Dejo, and he has the misfortune of being the only Serb in the group. He is also a heroin addict who owes money to everyone.

The four buddies get involved in a deal to transport drugs inside a bag of potatoes. Naturally, the merry band of misfits do not have a pleasant journey.

The quality of the writing, the dialogues, the overall acting, it all adds to the gritty picture of Zagreb and its people in the late nineties.

Watching it for the first time, it's a pretty good comedy. But when you watch it a few more times, some important questions we should all ask ourselves start to pop out.

Find it and watch it. It's worth it.

This is a movie about 4 guys without job, future or any kind of perspective. They spend their time on drinking, fighting, fanatically cheering for their local soccer club, lift shopping, stealing, drug smuggling, etc. So this movie shows how modern Croatian life becomes a copy of Western European countries. I like to say: That's what we fought for! For not having a jobs, not having any security, not having a lot of things that generation before us has had. Well, I don't want to sound nostalgic, but this movie shows to those who remember that we could do better (characters in the movie are too young to remember), much better. Now about movie itself.

I am amazed by realism, good dialogs, correct acting (at last realistic fight scenes), perfect camera, sound (the only real Croatian rock'n'roll band Majke). Not that I haven't seen those things in other movies, but not in Croatian (with few exceptions!). There is no real plot, things are just happening like any given day, and they are very well described.

All those things made me to give 9/10, as a support to Croatian movie makers to go where our neighbors (Bosina, Serbia, Romania) already came some time ago.

"Metastaze" is a story of four deeply troubled friends. Through them this movie explicitly shows some of the biggest problems in modern day society. Domestic violence, drug abuse and trafficking, ethnocentrism, and so on.

The film is beautiful in its brutality. The scenes are raw and the screenplay is simple. There is no knowitall badass character, no philosophy and no bulls*it. It's the world as it is. People thoroughly perplexed. Incurable.

After the war everyone is still fully focused on the conflicts that did not resolve and oblivious towards other aspects of life. Everyone is determined to keep hate alive. The seed of violence is sown. Deeprooted within.

Some see refuge in drugs and alcohol while others in beating the crap out of their wife. Each his own, right?

The characters are tragic. The point? Futility. Everyone f*cks up. You can only rely on yourself and even then you f*ck up even more. The second law of thermodynamics holds true. Ultimately everything really does go from bad to worse.

Metastaze is a well made movie.I am from Split,Croatia and since our cinematography isn't very good in the last twenty year's i can honestly say that this is one of the better movies coming from Croatia since 90's.Not the best,but still among the better ones.I'm not saying that it couldn't be better because it could be a lot better,but what i'm saying is that it's a decent movie to see.

I was very surprised by Rene Bitorajac who gave his best performance,so far,in this film.The screenplay was OK but nothing more.It had a few minor holes and it was very simple.Well,maybe not in Croatian cinematography.The direction was good except that shaky camera technique was a bit overused.

Too short the story,it's a good movie with a few flaws that can be overlooked if you consider that Croatia had maybe twenty good movies the most,in the last twenty year's.