Wil

A textbook example of good intentions, from which excessive formulaicness, hollow screenwriting and directorial/creative affectedness brought into being a perfect exploitation flick. The core situation and the web of moral trials are presented so spectacularly clumsily that the character of Wil comes across rather as an empty vessel going through model choices and dilemmas, by means of which the filmmakers demonstrate the complexity of the occupied nation’s situation. The protagonists is not consistent and is thus not believable, just as the director’s concept is not believable, as it unclearly veers between naturalism and exaggerated visual stylisation. The period and the characters thus seem to be nothing more than the delusions of an average screenwriter and their trajectory merely a puppet show put on by a mediocre director. Black Book from which someone has torn out all of the good chapters, Son of Saul deprived of all its disquieting energy. What remains is a shaky moral thriller whose urgency is made up of exclamation marks without meaning. (05.02.2024)