This is an *AMAZING* little movie who's title more or less translates out to THE SWAMP, which is fitting. My ability to understand Greek language is limited to various menu items at the pizza shop & deli up the street, but I was utterly riveted and mesmerized by this sweaty, nasty, somewhat mean spirited little Greek made thriller. And rest assured my idea of a foreign film is something with Godzilla destroying Hokkaido & rasslin' with King Kong on Mount Fujiyama.
BUT, I am able to sense a good movie when I encounter it. The lower the budget and the more B status & prurient the subject matter the better. Give me a potboiler like this made for a few thousand dollars by committed professionals who live to make movies any day of the week. When they are made right it matters not what language is spoken, though I would gladly hack off one of my toes for an English translation of this movie's dialog, I would love to find out what words the people are saying to each other -- even though the meaning of it all is crystal clear. This is a tough, nasty, gritty, grimy, foul tempered little crime thriller on the same level with DELIVERANCE and the Peter Fonda vehicle OPEN SEASON as far as displaying the basest of human emotions & tempering it all with a sadistic streak of unapologetic greed. I feel lucky to have been able to see it.
I will hazard to speculate on what the plot is about: A scumbag crime lord who realized he was being swindled by his personal pilot and her dirtball lover arranges to have her fly them out of the country with a fortune in banknotes hidden in the fuselage of his plane. He also manages to have the dirtbag accompany them along with his personal attack dog thug, with the intention of marooning the guy who double-crossed him on some sort of prison island where various social deviants have been condemned to a life of solitude. After landing the plane they proceed to beat the tar out of the guy and his girlfriend deliberately crashes the plane into a swamp at the end of the runway, sinking the mobster's loot and marooning all of them there for the foreseeable future. There is no boat or way off the island, and the prisoners confined there reluctantly agree to help pull the airplane out of the muck for a share of the fortune.
So far so good, but problems arise as personal quarrels between the various prisoners and newly arrived crime figures threaten to boil over as they strain against the muck and mud and swamp weeds together. A young couple happens upon the island by boat for a forbidden romp in the sun and find themselves enlisted in the task and their boat destroyed to keep anyone from leaving before the job is done (this was when I really started to understand how well written this movie is). There are arguments, falling outs, secret alliances are forged and various people manipulated both based on their status & sexes. Eventually the airplane is freed and the shares doled out ... which is when the fun really starts. The mob boss pulls some sort of ruse that results in the motley group of humans being locked inside of the prison lighthouse and basically screws everyone out of their shares just for a hose to the water tanks. Then he leaves, or rather tries to leave.
Thats as much as I will reveal and again, since I don't understand the language everyone is jabbering back and forth with the specifics are unclear & I may be wrong about certain details. I do know that this movie is an amazing study of the power that money and greed have over humans, and the lengths that some of us will go for a piece of the pie. The movie has lots of gritty, bare knuckled violence and even though nobody gets killed during the bulk of the film it's one of the most violent movies I have seen in ages. Particularly in regards to misogynistic violence towards women: I hope Greek men don't really slap their women around like that and hope the ladies have the good sense to hit back, preferably with something like a coal shovel.
There is also a fair amount of nudity & sex in the film, some implied lesbian nuzzling included, and the young lady of the couple who come to the island by boat is one of the sexiest little bits of Euro nookage I have ever laid eyes upon. One curious aspect of the film are the special effects model shots involving the airplane crashing, which look completely fake as hell but do not distract at all from the film's suspension of disbelief. They are also edited so quickly that there really isn't time to think about how fake they look. For that matter the entire movie is edited into a tightly woven ball of causality that never stops for a moment in unraveling this sleazy, gritty little tale of greed, lust, jealousy and hatred. Proof yet again that a good movie is also neither too long nor too short no matter what it's length.
You know what's even more pathetic than foreign films? INDEPENDENT films. I have zero use for them under most circumstances. Yet here is an independently made little foreign crime thriller film that beats the stuffing out of anything I have seen in a theater since MULHOLLAND DR., and it doesn't even have an English language subtitle. Plus an excellent object lesson on how to make a nearly perfect little movie for little or no money.
8/10; Are you reading, Quentin??
BUT, I am able to sense a good movie when I encounter it. The lower the budget and the more B status & prurient the subject matter the better. Give me a potboiler like this made for a few thousand dollars by committed professionals who live to make movies any day of the week. When they are made right it matters not what language is spoken, though I would gladly hack off one of my toes for an English translation of this movie's dialog, I would love to find out what words the people are saying to each other -- even though the meaning of it all is crystal clear. This is a tough, nasty, gritty, grimy, foul tempered little crime thriller on the same level with DELIVERANCE and the Peter Fonda vehicle OPEN SEASON as far as displaying the basest of human emotions & tempering it all with a sadistic streak of unapologetic greed. I feel lucky to have been able to see it.
I will hazard to speculate on what the plot is about: A scumbag crime lord who realized he was being swindled by his personal pilot and her dirtball lover arranges to have her fly them out of the country with a fortune in banknotes hidden in the fuselage of his plane. He also manages to have the dirtbag accompany them along with his personal attack dog thug, with the intention of marooning the guy who double-crossed him on some sort of prison island where various social deviants have been condemned to a life of solitude. After landing the plane they proceed to beat the tar out of the guy and his girlfriend deliberately crashes the plane into a swamp at the end of the runway, sinking the mobster's loot and marooning all of them there for the foreseeable future. There is no boat or way off the island, and the prisoners confined there reluctantly agree to help pull the airplane out of the muck for a share of the fortune.
So far so good, but problems arise as personal quarrels between the various prisoners and newly arrived crime figures threaten to boil over as they strain against the muck and mud and swamp weeds together. A young couple happens upon the island by boat for a forbidden romp in the sun and find themselves enlisted in the task and their boat destroyed to keep anyone from leaving before the job is done (this was when I really started to understand how well written this movie is). There are arguments, falling outs, secret alliances are forged and various people manipulated both based on their status & sexes. Eventually the airplane is freed and the shares doled out ... which is when the fun really starts. The mob boss pulls some sort of ruse that results in the motley group of humans being locked inside of the prison lighthouse and basically screws everyone out of their shares just for a hose to the water tanks. Then he leaves, or rather tries to leave.
Thats as much as I will reveal and again, since I don't understand the language everyone is jabbering back and forth with the specifics are unclear & I may be wrong about certain details. I do know that this movie is an amazing study of the power that money and greed have over humans, and the lengths that some of us will go for a piece of the pie. The movie has lots of gritty, bare knuckled violence and even though nobody gets killed during the bulk of the film it's one of the most violent movies I have seen in ages. Particularly in regards to misogynistic violence towards women: I hope Greek men don't really slap their women around like that and hope the ladies have the good sense to hit back, preferably with something like a coal shovel.
There is also a fair amount of nudity & sex in the film, some implied lesbian nuzzling included, and the young lady of the couple who come to the island by boat is one of the sexiest little bits of Euro nookage I have ever laid eyes upon. One curious aspect of the film are the special effects model shots involving the airplane crashing, which look completely fake as hell but do not distract at all from the film's suspension of disbelief. They are also edited so quickly that there really isn't time to think about how fake they look. For that matter the entire movie is edited into a tightly woven ball of causality that never stops for a moment in unraveling this sleazy, gritty little tale of greed, lust, jealousy and hatred. Proof yet again that a good movie is also neither too long nor too short no matter what it's length.
You know what's even more pathetic than foreign films? INDEPENDENT films. I have zero use for them under most circumstances. Yet here is an independently made little foreign crime thriller film that beats the stuffing out of anything I have seen in a theater since MULHOLLAND DR., and it doesn't even have an English language subtitle. Plus an excellent object lesson on how to make a nearly perfect little movie for little or no money.
8/10; Are you reading, Quentin??
