Volja sinovljeva

First and foremost, I can't express how proud and grateful I am to everyone involved in making this film. This is a huge step for Serbian, and I dare say ex-Yugoslav, cinema, and it fully deserves praise in that regard.

I absolutely disagree with other reviews that mention bad acting. On the contrary, the casting was fantastic, and most of the actors did an excellent job. This film also showed me how many "cinematic" actors we have, those whom the camera truly loves (the Bencina brothers for example). Let's be clear, this isn't a movie where anyone's acting is supposed to stand out, and it doesn't need to. Yes, there were a few lines of dialogue that made me raise an eyebrow in dismay, but that's negligible. What was truly irritating, loud, and downright ridiculous was: "OBJAVA KULE, OBJAVA KULE" repeated every 10 minutes by a Santa Claus figure holding a vacuum cleaner pipe.

The special effects in this film are either a hit or a major miss. For example, some fight scenes with lots of blood look incredibly professional and have the aesthetic this film should aim for-it doesn't look cheap, which is very important. However, some basic scenes, which have been done countless times in both high-budget and low-budget films, look like a cartoon here. Specifically, I'm referring to the machine gun shooting scene, for instance.

The sound is good, and the music is excellent. My only small criticism regarding the music is that the gusle (a traditional Serbian instrument) weren't incorporated more throughout the entire film, as it is precisely the instrument through which the storyteller narrates the tale.

Where this film earns my biggest criticism-and hence the lower rating-is in its editing, or more precisely the reason behind it: a trend in our cinema, present since the release of "Montevideo, Bog te video", of turning films into series. This film, however, seems to have done the opposite. A 2.5-hour film is paced so quickly that I fear the average shot length would be alarmingly short if analyzed thoroughly. An epic story like this, with a solid concept or at least the ambition to compare itself to films like "Mad Max" or "Dune", should never have allowed itself to be butchered by such rapid cuts, especially since this type of film is appearing on our screens for the first time.

The title of this review, a line spoken by one of the characters to the storyteller, "Tell him to speed up a bit, we don't need to know everything," is the very irony this film has suffered. Quite the opposite-I was drawn into the story and wanted to know everything, slowly and at my own pace, rather than watch a 2.5-hour trailer that feels like a setup for a series. I'd much rather watch this film split into multiple parts than a butchered version made to resemble a series.

Finally, I have just one question for the creators: Fidget spinner... really?

Other than the obvious great job done from the filming crew and color profile of the movie, everything else about it just bad. Story is weak, overdramatized and inconsistent, with bad acting, and the weirdest coctail of Mad Max wannabe, biker leather jackets, samurai swords, weird accents, random fidget spinner stuff all mixed together in the blender of terrible. The script sounds like it was written in english and google translate had the job of translating it to serbian, literally word for word. I was strangled and held hostage by this two and a half hour missery. Do yourself a favor and don't watch this. Two stars for camera crew and effects team. You guys make your own movie.

If you're thinking of watching this movie, it's a world you've already seen somewhere before, Into the Badlands (TV series), Mad Max 2 (1981), The 100 (TV series)... Old folk tales from Serbia, introduced into the post-apocalyptic future, give a special experience.

The scenery and costumes are irresistibly reminiscent of the aforementioned series, so the viewer will get the hang of it very quickly, but the problem remains the misunderstanding of the narrator with the instrument, which is characteristic of Serbian folk songs from the 16th and 18th centuries, so if you are not close to Serbian culture, this would be an obstacle in understanding the plot of the film.

In general, it is a big step forward in the Serbian film industry. It can always be better and there will always be critics with bad reviews. Considering that this is the first film made with this kind of theme in Serbia, we have to be more tolerant.

This movie is significantly better than the director's last movie, and you can clearly see it.

The pacing is good, the movie never feels like its dragging along, the cinematography, music, and honestly most of the sets are really well done considering the monetary and location limitations, most important part is that cgi never really took me away from what was happening.

The world is interesting, and there is a lot to explore in it, but that's currently my biggest issue with the movie;

At some points of the movie we get lore dumps, to the point that you don't know whats happening and who's who, especially in the seed people backstory, the narrator doesn't help either - please don't ever use the narrator in a movie.

Despite what a lot of people say, the runtime is not too long, it just needed to be used better, the audience doesn't need to know everything, condense the story, only tell the most important details, or only show the stories important to the movie but do it properly.

Some actors were pretty bad, but they were not in the story for a long time so that makes it slightly better.

I have a lot more gripes with the movie and how it was made but you get the point.

All in all, the movie is a good stepping stone to an actually really good next movie from this team, and I'm actually excited for it.

This movie is the first of its kind of these kinds of movies in Serbia. It has a great pace; the background lore is given in moderation; the characters are believable and you easily love the and cheer for the heroes, and hate and boo the villains, without anyone coming off as comical; character motivations are there, and every reaction makes sense from an internal logic standpoint.

The movie tells a classic hero's journey tale: a farm guy leaves his home behind to embark on a quest to save the ones he love, gets the girl, fights the bad guy minions to have an epic showdown with the main bad guy at the end, and returning to the starting places, having changed in the process.

The movie blends Serbian culture, style, and folklore elements with modern and more "Western" style, resulting in a very unique blend. It might be wrongully called "Serbian Mad Max" or "Serbian Fallout", but the comparison is only superficial: a post-apocalyptic setting. This is where the similarities end. It's a thing of its own, with its own identity, and a possibility of a wider story with future installments.

If this is the first of these kinds of modern epics to come, then it is a bright future for sure!