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Essential Killing (2010)

Posted By: Someonelse
Essential Killing (2010)

Essential Killing (2010)
720p BluRay Rip | MKV | 1280 x 692 | x264 @ 5860 Kbps | DTS 5.1 @ 1536 Kbps | 01:24:33 | 4,48 Gb
Lang: English-Polish-Arabic (chant) | Subtitles: English (embedded in MKV)
Genre: Thriller, War | 4 wins | Poland, Norway, Ireland, Hungary

A Taliban member who lives in Afghanistan is taken captive by the Americans after killing three American soldiers. He is transferred to Europe for interrogation but manages to escape from his captors and becomes an escaped convict on a continent he does not know.

IMDB

"Essential Killing" is set to be one of the most successful films from a Polish of the past decade. Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, the picture won the Special Jury Prize at 2010's Venice Film Festival. Lead actor Vincent Gallo won the Festival's Volpi Cup

The win was a surprise for the cast and crew of the film, as the picture is a controversial one. It tells the story of Mohammed (Vincent Gallo), a Taliban member captured in the desert by American forces, who finds himself transported to a nameless Eastern European country. He manages to escape into the vast frozen woodland, a world away from the desert home he knew. Forced into extreme survival mode, he must kill anyone who strays into his path. The film's stark treatment of the subject matter has a visceral effect on the viewer, challenging one's most deeply ingrained moral code and convictions about what is right and what is wrong.

Essential Killing (2010)

Mohammed is treated like an animal - humiliated and beaten, hunted by dogs, hunted like wild game - he gradually becomes an animal, feeding on what he can scavenge in the snowy woods, killing all who stand in his way. On the other hand he is human enough to show humanity to once again become a man - a stranger, thrown in an unknown land, forced into contact with a foreign culture, but still human. The title of the film carries a double meaning, both referring to the "essence" - the most primitive and primary basis of killing - and the "essential" nature of killing in this context - whereupon killing is imperative to survival. There is an underlying reference too, to the fanatical killing of religious extremists.

Essential Killing (2010)

Although Jerzy Skolimowski rejects comments that his film is political in its portrayal of the war in Afghanistan and secret CIA prisons allegedly scattered around the world. The political dimensions of the film are evident, however, according to Skolimowski, nature and the unbending laws of nature are also quite tangible elements of the film, as he explains: "Nature in this film is important for our hero and his alien status in the new, unfamiliar environment, which is the snow-covered forests of Europe. The landscape has a hand in creating the character and create his complex personality. It makes dialogue redundant. (…) Nature is an integral part of the film. The forest, animals which need to satisfy their hunger and compulsion to kill in the beautiful landscape. This is a story about man and nature. Wildlife is shown without sentimentality, but with all its splendor. It is an existential outsider journey to nowhere. But even if Mohammed were able to escape from his pursuers, how would he ever get home? Especially important for me is the scene in which Mohammed is woken by deer. His first instinct is to reach for his weapon, to kill. The animals are not afraid of him, however. They look at him with the same curiosity with which he looks at them. If they had belonged to the same species, shared the same fate, the same laws of nature would apply to both of them. It is a moment in which the hero realizes that he is part of a larger whole. He knows that he has failed to survive, but just then he sees the beauty of nature".

In late November 2010, the film won the main prize - the Astor de Oro - at the 25th International Film Festival in Mar del Plata in Argentina. Vincent Gallo also won the Best Actor prize for his role in the film.
Konrad J. Zarębski
Essential Killing (2010)

After his mostly well-received return to filmmaking with the intimate chamber piece "Four Nights With Anna," Polish helmer Jerzy Skolimowski tackles a broader canvas with "Essential Killing," an escape drama set almost entirely outdoors. Unfortunately, despite skillful assemblage, the script's plausibility issues increasingly undermine engagement, even with the generous argument that the pic is a parable and operates according to more poetic laws of realism. Still, the topical political angle – the lead, played surprisingly convincingly by Vincent Gallo, is an Afghani prisoner transported to a secret Euro location – could help "Killing" break out in a limited way offshore.

After opening with spectacular helicopter footage of a jagged, mountainous desert landscape in what is presumably meant to be Afghanistan (the location used is actually near the Dead Sea in Israel), the action begins with some American contractors (Zach Cohen, Iftach Ofir) on a secret-ops exploratory mission. A wrong turn in a canyon brings them face to face with a frightened Taliban soldier (Gallo), with fatal consequences.

Essential Killing (2010)

The Afghani (called Mohammed in the credits, but never actually named onscreen) is captured and brought to a U.S. military base for interrogation and waterboarding, although he doesn't talk, perhaps because he's simply unable to hear any questions after being temporarily deafened during capture. Soon after, he's flown to an unknown location with several other orange-jumpsuited prisoners, but en route to the next detention camp, the truck swerves off the road and the protag escapes barefoot through a snowy forest.

With a strong assist from pro editing (by Reka Lemhenyi) and an ominously sparse, often atonal score by Pawel Mykietyn that blends deftly with the source soundscape, helmer/co-writer Skolimowski builds effective suspense initially over whether and how the protagonist will stay alive, warm and uncaptured in what turns out to be the Polish countryside. There are felicitous touches, such as the visual counterpoint of the earlier desert scenes with later footage of the winter-white expanses of the European terrain.

Essential Killing (2010)

However, as the pic progresses and Mohammed keeps surviving serious injuries and scrapes, like some unholy cross between Rasputin and the Energizer Bunny, credibility is stretched to the breaking point. Flashbacks showing the protag in a mosque are perhaps meant to suggest that he's blessed by God, but religious belief barely figures as an issue in this near-wordless film, just as politics and the U.S. military's treatment of prisoners serve as little more than background context. Instead, Mohammed's adventure seems to serve strictly as an illustration of how individuals will do anything necessary to survive (hence the title).

In a strong perf, Gallo looks suitably ragged, frightened and desperate throughout – and, per press notes, was up for doing at least some of his own stunts. The handful of Polish- and English-speaking thesps playing bit parts here, as well as Emmanuelle Seigner (as a mute woman who appears toward the end), are less significant as co-stars than the animals Mohammed encounters and the pic's real star – its landscape.
Leslie Felperin
Essential Killing (2010)

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