Aposta na Vingança

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.

This is probably the best horse-racing film ever made, and it is based on a true story: the horse actually existed and won 54 races and was never beaten. The horse is the main character here, and the moment she is introduced you will follow her closely glued to the screen whenever she appears and triumphs in every scene, even when it becomes really critical. Around the horse is spun a romantic intrigue, a real romantic novel of forbidden love, revenge, horrible injustice, deep friendship turning into the opposite, despair and tragedy, and of course it's impossible to like or accept all of it. Ervin Nagy plays a hopeless character to begin with, but I could tolerate him when I found a close resemblance between him and king Ludwig II of Bavaria - the same kind of hopeless lack of judgement. His friend Tamas Keresztes makes a much more sympathetic and interesting character, while the girl Andrea Petrik, with her invalidity, adds plenty of spice to the show. To this comes the cat, which plays an enormously important role although saying nothing, not even miaowing, and constitutes perhaps the key to the story and saves it. This is a very spectacular film reminiscent above all of "Anna Karenina" with Keira Knightly, and the ballroom scenes must have been inspired from that film. But it's the horses that count. The one great portion of humour is presented by the one Englishman in the play, a jockey, whose introduction is perhaps the most unforgettable instance in the film - in bed. This is an adventure that will keep you alert and on the double in the horse-racing scenes.

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.

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.

If you love horses, watch it. If you just want to see a movie that has a great story alloying drama and action, watch it.

Not only is Kincsem a great horse movie but also represents accurately the underlying tension between the two countries in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I particularly enjoyed the jokes, but I am aware that these were primarily created for the Hungarian viewers. No worries, this does not mean you lose a lot, and the exciting scenes along with the breathtaking landscapes are going to make you wish you could hop on a horse and ride off into the sunset.

I would like to highlight the horse scenes which were amazingly detailed and seemed real. The story was well established and not predictable, the conversations and conflicts were exciting.

Undoubtedly, this has been the best Hungarian movie from the last ten years.

I highly recommend watching it.