Uspjeh

I waited for couple of months and then decided to give it a try on Saturday after lunch. I watched all 6 episodes in a row. Very good story, nice director (OScar winning Danis Tanovic) and very good actors and camera. Both thumbs up from my side.

I looked the first episode and can say I like it. Somehow I got caught up in that Nordic noir, watching everything shot north from Munich and I can say I like Uspjeh (eng. Success). Croatian Broen, and architect Haris drives, what else than - Volvo :) It seems to me that 6 episodes will be enough, I hope that from the second to the fifth will not be just filling. I'm a little bit bothered by the use of "dron" cadres, but ok ... at least the city of Zagreb looks like a real European metropolis, not a Balkan village at the end of the world. Original music is great, and music from the 60's must be, it seems to me that all retro today (listen to the soundtrack of Kiling Eve or Sharp Objects) provokes enthusiasm. Two thumbs up :)

Finally a Croatian TV series worth watching. True level of corruption is portrayed. Love the cast and particularly choice of music. Pretty certain season two will follow ...

"Success" (2019 release; 6 episodes running about 55 min. each) is a TV mini-series. As Episode 1 opens, we see a guy addressing a crowd, apparently a life-style speaker of some sort. "I lost everything and then I met these 3 people", he tells us. We then go back in time and we are in "Central Zagreb", as we see various people getting ready for the new day. One of them is a housewife, and on her way to work, she gets stuck in a highway traffic jam and her car is struck from behind. What happens next will shock you... At this point we are 10 min. into Episode 1, but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this is a hard-hitting TV mini-series from Croatia, where the daily lives of 4 strangers (Kristijan, Blanka, Vinka and Haris) end up being intertwined in the most unexpected of ways. (Episode 1 concludes with the 4 strangers meeting each other for the first time--sorry, I can't/won't divulge any more so as not to spoil). News flash: this TV series reminds us once again that there is more than capable TV series being produced not just here in the US. Thank goodness for HBO which diversifies its line-up with such foreign TV shows (think also such other foreign TV series like "When Shall We Kiss", "My Brilliant Friend", etc.).

"Success" premiered on HBO last year. In the current coronavirus pandemic, I've been looking to catch up with TV series that I had missed when they first aired. I recently binge-watched all episodes on "Success" in short order on HBO On Demand. So glad I did. If you are in the mood for a hard-hitting TV mini-series with a foreign flavor, I'd readily suggest you check this out and draw your own conclusion.

Superb acting, superb cinematography, i really like how they filmed zagreb and how they used drones to establish the locations. Rebro Hospital never looked so inviting. Sadly, the script, like with most croatian movies, not so superb and messes up at the end, already after ep1 the story seems very constructed and proceeds even more "artifical" from the middle on, nevertheless i watched the whole series in two days just to see how it ends.

Things that didnt work for me is how quick viktors father, a criminal kingpin, didnt appear anymore in the series after beginning of ep4, if someone was intensivly working on finding his sons killer it should have been him and his armada of thugs, even in the case that he is imprisoned one should think he is pulling the strings from inside the prison, he has a hunch that his sons ex-girlfriend knows something, you would think that therefore he permanently has a tail on her. Yes kiki admited later to the police on phone that he killed viktors son and ended up dead afterwards, that should made viktors father as suspicious as it should have made the police suspicious because of "motive".

The fact that a realestate-mogul made his own hands dirty by killing one of the main-characters (kiki) with a headshoot, even tho he has its own people for that kind of work (like we could see at the start of the movie), it seemed out of place and out of character. Same is true for the female police-officer who avenges the death of her sister which coincidentaly was a victim of the same realestate-mogul.

The same realestate-mogul at the end of the series seems, all of a sudden, to have one of the lousiest securities money can buy on his own party and ends being shoot by the suspended police officer on the rooftop. This plotholes (and others) just didnt sit well with me. Nevertheless the cinematograph was fine at the end, but that doesnt excuse a bad script.

Now its easy the criticise without making suggestions how to do it differently, out of my head i wonder if the plot could have been improved by letting our 4 protagonists frame and deceive the badyguys (kingpin/realestate-mogul) in a way so that they end up eliminating each other. I liked how navojec portraied the kingping and he did remind me of the kingpin in the punisher tv-series.

Some memorable mentions:

I believe this is the first time i have seen Leon Lucev without a beard, with a clean shave and a nice hair cut he really looks like a total different person, i know him from the movies "teret" and "muskarci ne placu", very fine actor and brilliantly portraid the police chief.

Toni Gojanovic, i only know from Karaula, he is nearly 40 but looks like 30 in this one, very good performance. the stage-act was a bit deceiving, guess this series did have a "red herring" after all and he reminded me of TomCruise from Magnolia. After the mess with croatian war movies i had to watch recently i have high hopes that "sixt bus" which he is staring in might finally be good war movie.

Last but not least, Marija Skaricic, i didnt know her before but did watch her few weeks ago in Nestali, while her character in that series totaly ruined the show for me (yes i totaly disliked it), she is actually a stellar actor in this one, plays a very believable police detective. I actually wished they would give her and Lucev theire own crime-tvshow. Totaly underrated actress, especially because of Nestali, but in this show, her performance a total homerun for a croatia!

All other actors where good too, but they already have a lot of exposion in other shows, thats why i picked only these three for this review.

Last but not least ...

Why did we croatians needed HBO to come to croatia until we produce something that has a certain level of quality, i dont know of any other country that has a film industry nearly exclusively statefunded, lacking quality most of the time and therefore running permanently on a los (taxpayers burden).

In international comparsion this show might be more like a 6 (sadly i dont know the budget they had), but i give this show a biased 8 since zagreb was my hometown for a while and i like how they filmed it and i liked the acting and cast very much.