AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

GazerRise Fantastic!

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

gavin6942 Matko is a small time hustler, living by the river Danube with his 17 year old son Zare. After a failed business deal he owes money to the much more successful gangster Dadan. Dadan has a sister, Afrodita, that he desperately wants to see get married so they strike a deal: Zare is to marry her.I love it when films reference other films and build off of them. Here, Grga Pitić is obsessed with the last line in the film Casablanca, "this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship", which he compulsively watches on his TV set. It is so great.While maybe not the huge success "Underground" was, this is a worthy film, with plenty of dark humor and great scenes. The man hanging with an umbrella? Only here could that be funny. And then mixing in gangsters and gypsy music? Incredible.

Tom Browne I must say, I don't understand why so many believe this movie is brilliant and praise Kusturica so much. The movie doesn't even make sense most of the time. The story line is confusing and the characters are very similar to each other which makes it even more difficult to keep up with. There are some funny and well thought episodes, but all in all it is not a good movie I have to say. You kind of wait for something to happen that makes sense and binds the movie together but it never seems to appear, which is kind of annoying when watching a movie.I wonder if people tried to abstract from the fact that it is a movie by Kusturica, would they still think it was a brilliant movie? I doubt it. I have no knowledge of Kusturica or the Balkans which is maybe why I didn't understand all the cultural and humorous attended scenes but that shouldn't really be a criteria for a movie in order to watch it.

Nikolay Todorov It is one of the best movies ever. This film shows, how deep Kusturica understands Gypsies!!! It is not like in Americans films where Americans are used to play Russians. It is very funny for me to watch such movies. They just don't understand Russia and their way of thinking and of course, vice versa, Russians don't understand Americans very well, although American culture is more exposed and it is easier to understand their culture.So i was very impressed by this film, but I also realized, that not everyone will appreciate this film. This film can show you if you can manage to live on Balkans. If you enjoy it, than you can come live here. If not, you will be constantly in depression and will be not happy. And I am not saying, that you have to get use to live in misery or something like that, you just have to have more different point of view and thinking. I don't think that only savages can enjoy it, I have master degree in Computer Science, I don't think I am stupid, but I still like this film very, very much. You just have to look beyond the first thing you see like violence, misery and so on.And I can say you which people will not like this film. This are people who think, that they life is the best and that everyone else must live like them. They just don't understand, that this is not true. If they see the different way of living, they start to think that those people are suffering, and that they must help them to live "better", to live like them, to have one house, two cars, social security and so on.So, I see in this film, how people can enjoy live even in a big misery and than and only than I can start enjoy this film.

ian_ison There are elements of Shakespeare's 'Taming of the Shrew' in this piece which are cleverly buried beneath the rollicking adventures of this small-time low-life society. Absolutely, these cats outdo the Shakespeare comedy.Everyone is out to use and abuse everybody else and we learn to accept that as Real Life as it was meant to be. The young lovers escape their slavery to family obligations to a happy ending and the shrew also finds true happiness in the least likely place. We get a morality play ending without feeling cheated in the least.There seem to be ethnic subtexts here which would be lost on a non-local audience - such as the Greek name of the local gangster family, the black comedy treatment of the murder of a corrupt guard on the border and the various religious or atheist affiliations. The sex urge seems to be everywhere as are cultural straight-jackets to keep it in check.My favourite scene is when the Matko character is given an enamel mug of the petrol that they've just bought for next to nix from a passing Russian barge with the object of assessing its quality by taste. He spits it out in disgust BECAUSE IT'S WATER! Priceless!