Some twenty years ago, just knowing that one of the main roles in the film is played by Robert De Niro was enough to conclude that this is a quality project. Lately, that conclusion has changed so much that today the name of Robert De Niro is associated with films that represent cheap, usually meaningless entertainment, making such a film legend almost humiliated by reckless acceptance of all sorts of roles.
Such is the case with this film, which was created on the basis of extremely debatable intentions of the producers, because despite my hard work, I failed to understand who would expect and pay to watch this and why. The topic itself is somewhat interesting. Two war veterans who clashed during the war in Bosnia meet again, hatred flares up and escalates in a race between life and death that will end in the death of one of them. De Niro plays an American, while the role of a Serb went to John Travolta, who once again proves that he should have retired after the movie Pulp Fiction.
There were two reasons that kept me from watching the film to the end. The first is the old glory of the main acting tandem, and the second is the research that is the ultimate limit of the mentality of producers who take the war in Bosnia as the main driving force for this extremely uninteresting, unrealistic and, in every sense, bad film. Several times I was tempted to stop watching and at the very end I regretted not doing it.
This film is not bad, this is the bottom of the bottom of world cinema. Extremely predictable action that can fit into a project of ten minutes, meaningless dialogues, unrealistic twists, bad camera setup and unconvincing acting are just some of the many flaws that the film has. The work of the producers is so visible that the film is permeated with untrue historical facts and Travolta’s character who speaks in a fictional language that should be Serbian. In general, one gets the impression that the film was made by ten-year-olds who grabbed a camera and a set of bows with arrows and who decided to kill a little boredom by shooting.
The positive sides in the film are the action and the barely visible charisma of the two actors. Everything else is far from the lowest limit of acceptability and quality. Bypass in a wide arc.
