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.

As far as known, the Croatian film budgets go below tolerable. Likewise, if staying in Croatia, they can hardly produce anything other than war and drama movies in old fashion. Now comes Metastasis in form of believable drama script with modern elements, modern directing and great cast. In short, Metastasis can be described as Croatian "Generation X" or "Trainspotting". Should you acknowledge that, this movie gains impressive amount of depth.

The book-based plot follows four younger middle-aged men in a somewhat shorter period of time - putting you in the middle of their lives near their personal peak, but teaches you about their past through conversations. The massive plus is an incredible amount of realism, or better say - it is 100% realistic. Those who live in Croatia, specially Zagreb, and experience harder life can truly identify completely with the movie, but even those who don't can recognize the problem this movie grapples with power and offers to the viewer.

There are three major successful factors that bring this movie above average - the acting performance led by ingenious presentation from Rene Bitorajac playing Krpa (a mop), one of four main characters (out of whom all four design rich but realistic company pretty much exactly like those in real life), the brutally real, dynamic and creative dialogs that can be without single doubt literally copy-pasted into life and in no way polished or "movie-like" (note that it's impossible to properly translate them into English, for example, although it's possible to get pretty close), and the selected number of social problems in Croatia all vividly presented as they are and familiar to majority. In some way, by going international the movie might not get as much applause as it should, but among those who can relate to the content, it truly is a masterpiece.

The leading of scenario is in range of modern storytelling and grants familiar but effective feeling of going the right direction. A number of twists, neither unreal, push the movie going, and execution of several scenes leaves powerful mental imprint.

To put it simple, if Croatia was USA, this movie would go into Oscar selection. A must see.

"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.

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.