Chico

I don't want to tell much about the movie I write about the main character Ricardo (Edurardo Rozsa Flores).

He played Chico alias Ricardo. This movie is about him and his real life. Eduardo played himself. But in the movie his name is Ricardo. Director Fekete and Edurardo said that the movie based on pure fictions. Thats not true. This is Eduardo's life more like a biography than anything else.

Unique: Because the main role played but not an actor but the real person who's story has been made up for a film. Its like if you would see Che Guevara is playing himself instead of Benicio Del Toro in the Sodenbergh's Che movie.

Eduardo Rozsa Flores was a journalist first. Secondly he was a soldier. Thirdly he was a revolutionary when he joined to the Croats in 1991. And for last he is an actor. A one time one.

Eduardo Rozsa Flores and the Chico movie is a unique strong confusing road-movie type documentary with biographical elements. History. The movie is the history and shows us as it happened not forcing you to decide who was right or wrong as others wrote me before. It is a worth to see and I would say if you ever lived in a communist country or you are interested in the history of the communist countries then it is a must see movie. However it will be not easy to understand what is going on without a basic knowledge in the theme.

Note: Eduardo Rozsa Flores (Ricardo aka Chico in the movie) was brutally killed in a military police raid in Santa Cruz, Bolivia in 2009. 8 years later as he finished this movie. Died like he lived by the bullet. A real revolutionary hero of our post modern times. Maybe the last one...

I would call Ibolya Fekete's "Chico" a comparison and contrast of intervention in the US and USSR spheres of influence. The protagonist comes from a Chilean intellectual family that idolizes all things socialist, but the family's flight to Hungary following the 1973 coup in Chile lets them see the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. The peoples of Eastern Europe soon throw off the chains of Soviet domination and look to the US as a beacon of freedom, but the protagonist still remembers the US intervention in his native country. The moral gray area becomes apparent with the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.

The movie doesn't moralize, instead simply letting the viewer form his/her own opinion about the sequence of events. It's hard to truly take sides when one sees the raids on people's homes in Chile, and later the bullet-riddled buildings in the former Yugoslavia. I recommend the movie.

The main reason I like Chico by Hungarian director Ibolya Fekete is that it never tries to force you to make a moral decision, to view world in black and white only. It's almost opposite to The Hurt Locker (which I honestly dislike) on that matter. Ibolya Fekete narrate her story, allowing movie watcher to determine who is write and who is wrong. And this is not an easy decision... it's not like a primitive story about straight and heroic American soldiers (Hurt Locker).

Also, people in 'Chico' knows what they are fighting for. They may be wrong and they are cruel, but the are not like Americans brought to Iraq by obscure political reasons of W.W...

The more you see 'Chico' the more you start to empathize to its main hero... and you're becoming devastated together with him.

I suspect, though, that it would be harder to understand this movie for people who were not born in USSR or other communist country, who didn't hear their propaganda for years.

At the outset I'll say I love films with some basis in historical events. The problem is of course that the more a film commits itself to historical events the more a review tends to refer to those events rather than the film.

Firstly, what I like about this film is that it doesn't try to appease any group or be politically correct. It doesn't go for the soft option as many other recent movies about recent wars do,ie: there is no good or bad, both side commit atrocities. Such liberal soppiness is misleading and directly opposed to historical fact and common sense. There are aggressors and there are victims, even though the lines of demarcation are occasionally blurred. This film in a way refers back to the films of commitment made in the 1930s in Hollywood or Latin America in the 1960s.

Similarly, people usually re-write history to suit their worldview. I note that another reviewer blamed the Yugoslav War on US and German imperialism and that the "poor" Serbians, Croatians and Bosnians were their pawns that had lived "peacefully and admirably until the West engineered the collapse of Yugoslavia". What planet did that come from? The Croatians and the Serbians have not got on in since the turn of the 20th century (as World War 1 and 2 show). Yugoslavia ( both pure and post WW2) was very much held together by force and intimidation. That's a historical fact. If the various ethnic groupings had "got on" the force of violence that erupted in the Yugoslavian War would not have occurred. That's common sense. I assume such views are based on ones internal beliefs. In this case its standard old style claptrap leftism (which unfortunately gives leftism a bad name).

History is written by the victors and in Yugoslavia after 1944 the Serbians (once again) took control of the country. Their history, which was passed out as historical fact for the next 50 years, was, they were leftists and the Croatians were all fascists, therefore you should support us in this war. The reality of course is that the Yugoslav army and irregulars in the recent war were dominated by Serbian nationalists seeking a greater Serbia and using ethnic cleansing and murder as a means to achieve this, not to mention the fact that during World War 2 (up to 1944 in any event) most of the Communist Partizans were in fact Croatian.

The beauty of course is the film is attempting to overcome the conventionally held history. It doesn't deal with past history though, but rather with what is happening now. By dealing with "history now" the film sheds light on some of the lies that have been passed out as historical fact.

The central character Chico is a man of contradictions. A child of a Hungarian Jewish father and a Spanish Catholic mother he is a child of the 1960s Latin revolutions and raised in a leftist family. So he is a Communist but a practicing Catholic, he goes to a Catholic priest for confession but prays at the weeping wall, he is a humanist but advocates war.

These supposed contradictions always existed within people. People are molded from many historical events and social forces surrounding them. The only place pure ideologies exist are in philosophical arguments between half smart raconteurs or in undergrad university assignments …. ie: you cant believe in that if you believe in that etc. This film never backs away from commitment but it does subtlety (and sometimes not so subtlety) suggest that there is another side. Accordingly, you don't get the feeling you are being preached at (whereas you might from this review).

The film takes you on Chico's journey through causes around the world like a frenzied 20th century Don Quixote looking for meaning. Chico's humanity ultimately leads him to Yugoslavia and the Croatian Homeland War in the 1990s. And even though it is not a ideologically correct war (as his father tells him) he knows within himself that he must side with the oppressed.

Chico searches and is redeemed but is he content, or is he saddened and scarred? At times it seems that Chico, like a Zelig, was at all the important late 20th century events, and the film seems to make comment on them. On that level the film is not always successful (its hard enough commenting on one situation). The film is more successful as a personal odyssey through tumultuous events.

There are some standard Hollywood war movie clichés, ie: the outnumbered and besieged forces, the sing a long etc but, but they are downplayed, and I sometimes wonder if clichés became clichés because they actually occurred in times of war. What underpins the whole film though is the upfront, "in your face" reality of it all ... like Sam Fuller with a hand-held camera. The photography is not pretty, which suits the picture perfectly although I wouldn't have minded a few more scene setting shots. The docu-drama works well at drawing you into the story whilst distracting you from the budgetary limitations of the film. The "docu" is the newsreel footage of the war whilst the "drama" is Chico's journey (both physically and spiritually) and people he meets on the way. This is a war film that deals with people rather than action … there is little action and when it does come it is over quickly.

The acting is fine, and Eduardo Rozsa Flores plays Chico effortlessly, not surprisingly as Chico is based on Flores own life in part! Flores fought, globe trotted and eventually found a cause in the Croatian Homeland War. The direction ( by Ibolya Fekete) is handled nicely and the action is gritty. The real stand out though is the directors juxtaposition (you have to love that word even if it is overused) of live action with news footage.

If you want to be confronted and challenged ... watch this.

This is a semi fictional memoir of an "international man" who have witnessed various political upheavals in recent 30 years.

I was hoping that this film would offer unique insight into politics and war. I was also hoping that it would be touching and affecting. However, I was disappointed by this film. "Chico" seemed fragmentary, with the main character, Ricardo, staying in one country for 10 to 20 minutes. As could be expected, no detailed storyline could be elaborated in such time frame. The excuses of him moving to another place were often perfunctorily explained. The result was a disappointing collection of fragmented clips shot in various countries.