Title: No Man's Land
Release Date: 2001-12-21
Genres: Art House & International, Drama
High essence:
"Laura: When a Bosnian relief squad gets lost in the fog, only one, Ciki (DavidStraitharn look alike Branko Djuric), survives, but he finds himself stuckwith the dead body of a comrade in a trench in between enemy lines andsafety.""Deborah Young If the war between Bosnia and Serbia has come to be viewed as a paradigm for the atrocity of civil warfare in our time, Danis Tanovic's feature debut No Man's Land is the 1993 Bosnian conflict in microcosm."
"Simon Callow's portrayal of Colonel Soft, a supercilious United Nations official who cares only that the organization emerge from the crisis without blemish, is a savage portrait of nervous bureaucratic wheeling and dealing that has little regard for the lives being gambled."
"A small-scale battlefield farce, it speaks volumes about the absurdities of modern ethnic conflicts in the age of ever-present but under-effective UN Peacekeepers -- and it does so without soap box speeches, overblown battle sequences or playi aetaphocal violins."
"Ultimately the UN's UNPROFOR soldiers led by a French peacekeeper, a relentless British reporter, a German bomb expert and various bumbling cadre of the UN get involved, revealing the peculiarities of modern war where strategy is more concerned with politics, coalitions and publicity than troop movements."
"This is the basic setup of No Man's Land, a tense Bosnian anti-war movie directed -- with confidence and flair -- by documentary filmmaker Danis Tanovic that won a special Jury Prize at Cannes and is the country's official Academy Award submission."
"If wars are absurd in general, the Bosnian conflict must be oneof the most ridiculous, because the groups who hate each othermay have historical reasons for their enmity but given theircommon language and enjoyment of a country so beautiful thathas for decades a mecca for tourism by jet-setters and sun-worshippers alike, they simply had no territorial or ideologicalrationale for conflict."
Medium essence:
Robin Clifford:- This prompts the head of thelocal UN forces (disparagingly referred to as the Smurfs by combatantson both sides), Colonel Soft (Simon Callow), to get his peacekeeping troopsinvolved, including an explosives expert to defuse the mine.
- He kills one of two Serb scouts sent to investigate andhas a standoff with the other, Nino (Rene Bitorajac).
- Laura: When a Bosnian relief squad gets lost in the fog, only one, Ciki (DavidStraitharn look alike Branko Djuric), survives, but he finds himself stuckwith the dead body of a comrade in a trench in between enemy lines andsafety.
Deborah Young:
- They cruelly booby trap the body of Chera, a dead Bosnian soldier, with a bouncing mine, which will jump into the air and explode as soon as the body is moved.
- Both the Serbs and Bosnians decide to call on the UN peacekeeping forces, UNPROFOR, to get the men out.
- Deborah Young If the war between Bosnia and Serbia has come to be viewed as a paradigm for the atrocity of civil warfare in our time, Danis Tanovic's feature debut No Man's Land is the 1993 Bosnian conflict in microcosm.
Stephen Holden:
- Since Nino, a new recruit, has no idea of how to deactivate the mine, Cera's only hope is that somewhere, somehow an expert can be found and called to the scene.
- Simon Callow's portrayal of Colonel Soft, a supercilious United Nations official who cares only that the organization emerge from the crisis without blemish, is a savage portrait of nervous bureaucratic wheeling and dealing that has little regard for the lives being gambled.
- If Ciki and Nino's tit-for-tat power games suggest that ''No Man's Land'' is standard comic antiwar satire illustrating the familiar proposition that all men are little boys and all wars schoolyard quarrels, the movie isn't content to let us off with knowing smiles of comic recognition.
Rob Blackwelder:
- A small-scale battlefield farce, it speaks volumes about the absurdities of modern ethnic conflicts in the age of ever-present but under-effective UN Peacekeepers -- and it does so without soap box speeches, overblown battle sequences or playi aetaphocal violins.
- Bosnian writer-director Danis Tanovic boils down the ironic truths of centuries-old enmity in his homeland and presents them in a meaningfully funny story about two soldiers from opposite sides of the war, trapped together between enemy lines in an abandoned trench.
- When a near-naked man appears in their binoculars, running back and forth atop the trench, a commander will shrug and say, I'll alert HQ.
Jules Brenner:
- First tending to his wounds, then to the acquisition of cigarettes, he discovers the body of one of his comrades, Cera (Filip Sovagovic).
- In a series of exchanging upper hands, Chiki and Nino, enemies, realize that, for their survival they must bring in outside help and devise unexpected methods to attract attention by the warring factions.
- Ultimately the UN's UNPROFOR soldiers led by a French peacekeeper, a relentless British reporter, a German bomb expert and various bumbling cadre of the UN get involved, revealing the peculiarities of modern war where strategy is more concerned with politics, coalitions and publicity than troop movements.
William Arnold:
- The reporters relish their power and everyone is playing to the cameras: especially the U.
- So Ciki and Nino find themselves stuck in this no man's land, with no assistance coming in from either side, playing a cat-and-mouse game of one-upmanship while Cera has regained consciousness and all three realize that, if he moves, everyone will die.
- This is the basic setup of No Man's Land, a tense Bosnian anti-war movie directed -- with confidence and flair -- by documentary filmmaker Danis Tanovic that won a special Jury Prize at Cannes and is the country's official Academy Award submission.
Harvey S. Karten:
- 8/28/01 I remember finding myself in possession of a Eurailpass onesummer about 20 years ago, determined to get my money's worthby zipping through Europe at a pace which would put even the If-It's-Tuesday-This Must-Be-Belgium crowd in awe.
- ) anmakes its point with some solid M*A*S*H*-like dry humor ratherthan with the ineffectively impotent raillery as in last year's flopabout the conflict in Northern Ireland, An Everlasting Piece andwith only those explosions and that gunplay necessary tocommunicate to the audience the absurdity of the whole mess.
- If wars are absurd in general, the Bosnian conflict must be oneof the most ridiculous, because the groups who hate each othermay have historical reasons for their enmity but given theircommon language and enjoyment of a country so beautiful thathas for decades a mecca for tourism by jet-setters and sun-worshippers alike, they simply had no territorial or ideologicalrationale for conflict.
Low essence:
Robin Clifford:- A British field correspondent, Jane Livingstone (Katrin Cartlidge),arrives on the scene and, through the worldwide television media, escalatesthe tiny drama to international proportions.
- This prompts the head of thelocal UN forces (disparagingly referred to as the Smurfs by combatantson both sides), Colonel Soft (Simon Callow), to get his peacekeeping troopsinvolved, including an explosives expert to defuse the mine.
- First time writer/director Danis Tanovic enters the international filmforum with a solid work that depicts the sudden horror of war, but alsoinjects battleground humor that points out the cynicism and acceptanceof the toll it takes on the individuals who do the fighting.
- He kills one of two Serb scouts sent to investigate andhas a standoff with the other, Nino (Rene Bitorajac).
- Laura: When a Bosnian relief squad gets lost in the fog, only one, Ciki (DavidStraitharn look alike Branko Djuric), survives, but he finds himself stuckwith the dead body of a comrade in a trench in between enemy lines andsafety.
- Soon after Ciki and Nino discover that waving white flags only drawsfire from each side, they find they're not alone - that dead body, Nika'sfriend Cera (Filip Sovagovic), is alive, albeit effectively disabled.
- While Sergeant Marchand (Georges Siatidis),leader of the reconnaissance trio, is a level-headed, sensible man (andthe only true hero of the story), he's hamstrung by his higher ups whoare more intent on covering their asses.
Deborah Young:
- They cruelly booby trap the body of Chera, a dead Bosnian soldier, with a bouncing mine, which will jump into the air and explode as soon as the body is moved.
- Chiki kills the inventor of this sinister device and wounds his comrade, a raw recruit with glasses named Nino (Rene Bitorajac).
- Both the Serbs and Bosnians decide to call on the UN peacekeeping forces, UNPROFOR, to get the men out.
- Basically in the mold of a serious, macho combat film up to this point, film suddenly gives way to ironic Balkan comedy in depicting a UN detachment of Frenchmen tooling around in their unused white tank.
- The struggle, sometimes ironic, sometimes dramatic, between a Bosnian and Serbian soldier stranded together in a trench between their armies' lines stands as both an allegory of these hostilities and a universal symbol for the absurdity of all wars.
- In a worthy plot twist, the Bosnian soldier lying on the mine turns out to be very much alive, but in a fatal trap.
- Deborah Young If the war between Bosnia and Serbia has come to be viewed as a paradigm for the atrocity of civil warfare in our time, Danis Tanovic's feature debut No Man's Land is the 1993 Bosnian conflict in microcosm.
Stephen Holden:
- Since Nino, a new recruit, has no idea of how to deactivate the mine, Cera's only hope is that somewhere, somehow an expert can be found and called to the scene.
- Like boys taunting each other in a schoolyard, they hurl mutual accusations until the Bosnian, Ciki (Branko Djuric), who is armed, forces the Serb, Nino (Rene Bitorajac), at gunpoint to say out loud that the Serbs were to blame.
- One of the movie's dark running jokes is that everyone seems to speak a different language and has trouble communicating.
- The continual struggle of people to make themselves understood becomes a metaphor for the war itself.
- Simon Callow's portrayal of Colonel Soft, a supercilious United Nations official who cares only that the organization emerge from the crisis without blemish, is a savage portrait of nervous bureaucratic wheeling and dealing that has little regard for the lives being gambled.
- His performance is matched in acidic power by Katrin Cartlidge's portrayal of Jane Livingstone, a cold, snippy journalist whose anything-to-get-the-story attitude embodies the unquestioned sense of entitlement that so many television journalists bring to their work.
- If Ciki and Nino's tit-for-tat power games suggest that ''No Man's Land'' is standard comic antiwar satire illustrating the familiar proposition that all men are little boys and all wars schoolyard quarrels, the movie isn't content to let us off with knowing smiles of comic recognition.
Rob Blackwelder:
- A small-scale battlefield farce, it speaks volumes about the absurdities of modern ethnic conflicts in the age of ever-present but under-effective UN Peacekeepers -- and it does so without soap box speeches, overblown battle sequences or playi aetaphocal violins.
- Bosnian writer-director Danis Tanovic boils down the ironic truths of centuries-old enmity in his homeland and presents them in a meaningfully funny story about two soldiers from opposite sides of the war, trapped together between enemy lines in an abandoned trench.
- More than once the balance of power shifts (in a struggle for a gun, for example) and one will send the other to the top of the trench -- in his underwear (i.
- When a near-naked man appears in their binoculars, running back and forth atop the trench, a commander will shrug and say, I'll alert HQ.
- If he moves, they're all dead.
- LINKS for this film Official site at movies.
- com at Rotten Tomatoes at Internet Movie Database Brilliantly unassuming Bosnian war farce 'No Man's Land' a triumph of meaningful but ironic laughs SPLICEDwire --> War movies have a tendency to be grandiose and didactic ( Saving Private Ryan ), action-packed and heroic ( Behind Enemy Lines ), maudlin and self-important (Life Is Beautiful) -- or some combination thereof.
Jules Brenner:
- First tending to his wounds, then to the acquisition of cigarettes, he discovers the body of one of his comrades, Cera (Filip Sovagovic).
- Leaving his gun on the other side of the trench Chiki rushes inside a command post to hide.
- One is a battle hardened veteran, the other, Nino (Rene Bitorajac), a recent recruit who is with his superior to learn military techniques.
- Knowing he's about to be discovered, Chiki springs out of the cabin and shoots the two Serbs, killing the veteran and wounding Nino in the stomach.
- In a series of exchanging upper hands, Chiki and Nino, enemies, realize that, for their survival they must bring in outside help and devise unexpected methods to attract attention by the warring factions.
- Ultimately the UN's UNPROFOR soldiers led by a French peacekeeper, a relentless British reporter, a German bomb expert and various bumbling cadre of the UN get involved, revealing the peculiarities of modern war where strategy is more concerned with politics, coalitions and publicity than troop movements.
- Media presence was truly part of this war and the way it's presented in this context by a documentarian of the conflict may not be a dramatic fabrication.
William Arnold:
- peacekeepers, who, in the context of the movie, have a responsibility and completely evade it.
- The reporters relish their power and everyone is playing to the cameras: especially the U.
- Then Ciki jumps from hiding to kill one of the Serbs and wound the other, Nino ( Rene Bitorajac ).
- So Ciki and Nino find themselves stuck in this no man's land, with no assistance coming in from either side, playing a cat-and-mouse game of one-upmanship while Cera has regained consciousness and all three realize that, if he moves, everyone will die.
- This is the basic setup of No Man's Land, a tense Bosnian anti-war movie directed -- with confidence and flair -- by documentary filmmaker Danis Tanovic that won a special Jury Prize at Cannes and is the country's official Academy Award submission.
Harvey S. Karten:
- 8/28/01 I remember finding myself in possession of a Eurailpass onesummer about 20 years ago, determined to get my money's worthby zipping through Europe at a pace which would put even the If-It's-Tuesday-This Must-Be-Belgium crowd in awe.
- ) anmakes its point with some solid M*A*S*H*-like dry humor ratherthan with the ineffectively impotent raillery as in last year's flopabout the conflict in Northern Ireland, An Everlasting Piece andwith only those explosions and that gunplay necessary tocommunicate to the audience the absurdity of the whole mess.
- If wars are absurd in general, the Bosnian conflict must be oneof the most ridiculous, because the groups who hate each othermay have historical reasons for their enmity but given theircommon language and enjoyment of a country so beautiful thathas for decades a mecca for tourism by jet-setters and sun-worshippers alike, they simply had no territorial or ideologicalrationale for conflict.
- The ambitious journalist is looking out forher career, the English officer would rather be back at HQ playingchess with his leggy blonde assistant, and the Bosnian soldiers,well, they all seem like such cretins it's difficult to figure out justwhat they would rather do than sit in a trench.
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Source:
http://www.reelingreviews.com/nomansland.htm
http://splicedwire.com/01reviews/nomansland.html
http://reviews.imdb.com/Reviews/304/30417
http://variagate.com/nomans.htm?RT
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/movies/51466_noman21q.shtml
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9403EFDB123CF934A35751C1A9679C8B63&partner=Rotten Tomatoes
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117798034.html?categoryid=31&cs=1