Karry
Best movie of this year hands down!
Beanbioca
As Good As It Gets
ThedevilChoose
When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.
gogoschka-1
In the case of this movie, the Oscar was well deserved. The film was nominated in the wrong category, though ('Best Foreign Language Film'). It should have been up for 'Best Picture', 'Best Original Screenplay', 'Best Director - and it should have won all of those. As far as I'm concerned, this may very well be the finest film on the subject of war - or conflict in general - that was ever made. I've never seen anything similar; this film manages to show so many aspects of war, of human nature; it somehow manages to capture the essence of something that is inexplicable. Truly one of a kind and a must-see. And don't think for one second that this is some pretentious drivel or slow art-house fare - this is very much the opposite. 10 out of 10.Favorite films: http://www.IMDb.com/list/mkjOKvqlSBs/Lesser-known Masterpieces: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls070242495/Favorite Low-Budget and B-Movies: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls054808375/Favorite TV-Shows reviewed: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls075552387/
Gabriel Negrusa
This movie has the same rating as Underground by Emir Kusturica and i expected it to be at least half as good, but in reality it's not even remotely close to that masterpiece. But some people praise it as a realistic take on war, maybe the most realistic ever. Well, if you want realistic take on war watch The Hurt Locker. No Man's Land is basically the Hollywood version of that. Even the first Rambo is more realistic and deeper in some ways. Why? Many thing happening in the movie make no sense, for example Ciki looks like a calm guy, he didn't lose his judgement when he was struck by a tank projectile, no he just went to search for a cigar to smoke. But after being saved, he makes the dumb decision of threatening a whole army with a pistol, what was he thinking? That action did not fit the character of Ciki we saw earlier. This is just a sign of amateurish plot design. And the french UN sergeant, he defied his superiors and risked his life just for a mission he didn't even knew what was about until he got there.As a tragedy it was hard to feel bad for any of the main characters, they are not very sympathetic, and they don't show enough of their personality to make you care for them. If a situation like this was real maybe i would, but then again you hear stuff like this on TV often, and it's about innocent civilians. I only felt bad for the UN soldiers that wasted their time trying to save 2 people that didn't want their help.It's not a that bad movie, but almost everything it shows has been done better somewhere else.
duelek
"Neutrality does not exist in the face of murder. Doing nothing to stop it is, in fact, choosing. It is not being neutral." This quote sounds good and contains a very impressive statement about the crime of inaction. As I watched the movie many years ago for the first time, this quote was my favourite and I was fascinated by the movie's strong critical stance against the Western world watching people killed on TV, as if it was a reality show. More or less the same approach was on another civil war themed movie, Hotel Rwanda (2004), where again peace forces were nothing but an incapacitated group of tourists serving only to visual aesthetics in their colourful uniforms. Having watched No Man's Land for a second time, I have different feelings about it. The course of events is actually in its natural civil war conditions: People speaking the same language kill each other and all are convinced that they defend their fatherlands, until a French officer, who questions himself about the goals, purposes and responsibilities of his military mission, violates his authority and with some luck finds himself in a disillusion of being able to intervene, make decisions and save lives as a neutral side, meaning on neither side but on the side of humanity. In the eyes of the audience this officer with only good intentions throughout his actions, even when he disobeys his commander, is a hero. The character Jane Livingstone appears also to be such a hero using her camera instead of a weapon, whose statement on news channel summarizes the critical approach of the movie towards inaction. But later on even this sympathetic, charming woman hero turns out to be one of those greedy press members insulting his cameraman by telling him not to think or saying that a trench is just a trench. On the other hand the "evil guys", like the captain threatening the press members with confiscating their yellow cards or the colonel, who only sits back at his office and flirting with his "secretary", become the wiser ones with the unexpected and tragic final. Of course one cannot deactivate a quality trap mine, made in EU, because the EU produces only good stuff, which gives it the right to have a say in other countries with its military presence, whose members at the end of the day only get shocked by the madness of the "maniac Balkan people", who even don't know how to speak French. The tragic end didn't make me happy and when I first saw the movie I had really hopes for Cera when Chiki told him he'll die of cancer. But the tragedy is reality and it is good that Tanović didn't try to avoid it. The war itself was a choice and the mine was only produced to kill people right at the beginning. Saying "I'm neutral" in this case should be translated as "it is not personal". The bomb is not produced to kill Cera but anyone, so it is not personal and in the eyes of the war persons are not really worth, contrary to what the French officer thought at the beginning. I'm sure if the movie continued we would see him back in his hut and learned not to question things anymore, because a soldier's duty is to do what is said, not to think, just like Livingstone's cameraman. Both have to shoot when it is ordered.
Lee Eisenberg
The horror that engulfed the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s seemingly couldn't get depicted in comedy. But Danis Tanović's "No Man's Land" does just that, albeit as black comedy. It portrays a Bosnian (Branko Djuric) and a Serb (Rene Bitorajac) getting trapped in a foxhole together with a man laying on a mine that will explode if he gets up. Slowly but surely, the news gets out, and the incident is the center of attention.This movie isn't about the war as much as it's about how the world saw - or wanted to see - the events, and simply the inanity of everything that happened in Bosnia following its independence. The absolute futility of war and colonialism/imperialism is summed up by a repeated line: "I say that it's true because I have a gun and you don't." Not to mention what happens when UNPROFOR gets involved and the media starts covering it.Without a doubt, "Ničija zemlja" (the title in Bosnian) doesn't paint a pretty picture of international affairs: aside from the genocide itself, there was the helplessness of the foreign governments to do anything about it, and the "human interest story" approach that the press took, much like in Rwanda (which one character mentions). One could consider these the troika of tragedies in any tragic situation. But I definitely recommend the movie. The fact that things similar to the depicted events keep happening casts a sorry shadow on our world.Also starring Katrin Cartlidge as a reporter and Simon Callow as a general.
