“I am a soldier. And that says it all. I have only seen one film about the war in Yugoslavia: No Man’s Land, which was essentially an anti-war drama. There was also the movie Sniper 2 starring Tom Berranger, which told, however, about the events after the conflict, but in the same place, in Kosovo, to be exact. Now I watched the Polish film Demons of War, the first Polish film I ever watched. And, I must say, the film is wonderful.
Let’s face it, this film is not about the ideological confrontation of Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and other Albanians. There is a hint, of course, of the massacre in Srebrenica, but, again, the focus is not the parties to the conflict mentioned above, but ordinary mercenaries of unknown origin, together with local bandits who have strayed into a nationalist group, which, having grown up on the suffering of peaceful workers and peasants, along the way is going to seize power in this region. And since the main evidence required for the latter target is far from their area of deployment, they set up an "accident" one of the helicopters, which is their agent with the necessary thing, and then "take him prisoner." But everything goes not according to plan, because the helicopter was accompanied by the Polish military, or killed in the crash, or killed by the bandits themselves, and here right under the nose - the Polish checkpoint, which settled the peacekeeping unit of the Troop, whose platoon headed by Major Eduard Keller and Sergeant Tikhim under the escort of the second major and lieutenant of counterintelligence urgently goes to save their own. That's the whole story, actually.
The nineties are a very contrasting time. On the one hand, the cinema of many countries, especially the post-Soviet space, has undergone a certain depression, but, on the other hand, replenished with brilliant paintings of varying degrees of fame, such as “Sniper” (1992), “Saving Private Ryan” and “When the fanfare is silent” (1998), “Brother” and “Ghoul” (1997), “Thirteenth warrior” (1999) and many others. The film “Demons of War”, shot in the same year as “Brother” and “Ghoul”, closely adjoins this pantheon. The picture amazes, firstly, brilliant scenery consisting of hilly and wooded Balkan landscapes, a real military camp and a real village, secondly, good actors, and thirdly, battle scenes. Everything is set at a quite decent level, and even though, compared to the “ordinary Ryan”, they look too local and compressed, but they are put at the level of “Ryan”, that is, competently and qualitatively.
However, it should be noted that all of the above manifests itself only if you close your eyes to a specific minus, which, no matter how tried, could not completely cover the pros.
Most of the characters simply do not have adequate motivation. No, they explain their behavior quite clearly and even logically, but, for some reason, they do it too late.
During the first serious clash with the squad of Skriya - the local Bandera - almost all the characters are revealed in full: all the soldiers, with the exception of Keller, Quiet and the second major with a counterintelligence officer, suddenly begin to scream full-length across the field, like a herd of sheep, either panicking or openly sending Keller, trying to give orders, a French journalist recently rescued from captivity, dimly looking at the camera lens, suddenly begins to scream, trying to portray a counter-terrified world in general.
Enemies by stupidity, sometimes do not lag behind: they have three trunks rumble behind them, three of them were mowed down literally halfway from the ear, and they continue to stand still, like donkeys, humbly waiting for, at last, the contra will deign to raise the ACMS and ... with the grimace of aristocratic disgust to remove it. It seems that Game of Thrones with the hypertrophied honest Ned Stark has not yet been released.
The Frenchwoman, by the way, is another lady: after a hot fight, she has the audacity not to reflect and fall into hysteria, as it was on the battlefield, but to complain to the main character that he does not like her, you see. The very thing you should think about in the middle of a pile of corpses, here in terrible convulsions dies Petrek Bohr, recently her cover, an agent of local Banderovites stabs another guy with a knife, and she only has the mind to be angry with Keller for not letting him get in his pants.
Exactly in the same category falls Houdini, the character of Zamakhovsky. 'I am a pacifist!' he shouts, snapping the shop and throwing it into the grass, panicking and generally trying to piss off the commander. And my question to him is exactly the same as to Charles Shakespeare from The Guardian of Death, and what else Keller himself asked this man: “Soldier, what have you got in your hands?” Why put people like that in the picture? Shakespeare in the same "Deathwatch" appears to us, at least, an unfired kid who felt fear at the sight of a German machine gun aimed at him, and it can be understood, but how can one understand a person who had already been in a shootout, and, in unequal conditions with the enemy, voluntarily agreed to participate in a mission in which he did not expect anything but the same thing, he knew about it perfectly and ... safely merged? Why would you bring such a character into the picture? For the anti-war moment? Open your eyes, comrade Pasikovsky, a great many anti-war dramas have come out, and none of them had anything like it!
Against this background, I once again want to emphasize the acting of Bohuslav Linda. His Major Keller is a model of endurance and calm, with such leaders really want to go to hell. No less respect deserves the character of Miroslav Baki, Sergeant Quiet, a Polish platoon sniper with a Romanian FPK rifle with a PSO-1 sight, fully justifying his name and, like his commander, does not lose his temper in difficult situations. Also, as we noted, it is worth paying tribute to the major and counterintelligence officer. The first, although he argues with Keller in every possible way because of leadership in the platoon, does not give a hint that is forgotten, the second, albeit stupid, but honest, about which the main character tells him directly.
This film, strictly speaking, is an amateur, although I would recommend it to everyone to watch. The topic is widely known in narrow circles, the plot specifics on a particular case in the middle of a local conflict makes the topic even narrower. But for the sake of, I repeat, the games of Bohuslav Linda and the beautiful Yugoslav landscapes, it is definitely worth seeing.
Linda, by the way, looks a lot like Tom Berranger. Even their roles are similar: Thomas Beckett, Sergeant-Commander of the US Army with iron nerves and a sniper rifle in his hands, Eduard Keller, Major of the Polish Army with iron nerves and a sniper rifle in his hands.
8 out of 10