Doktor Mladen (1975) User Reviews

Doktor Mladen (1976)

[krule88 · 8/10 · 26 February 2011]

This film was shot and went in theaters in 1975 and not the 1976th The film tells the doctor Mladen, right patriot who led the people of Krajina in the fight against the Germans and the Ustasha. Great virtue of the film is the image that the environment where the only action going on and the presentation of the story. Otherwise I am a doctor but then is not only a legend Kozara and environment but also the whole of Krajina. I display frustrated the Germans and the Ustasha was sufficient evidence of how the doctor was very important personality. Before the end of the film director died in the film, so that the end of the most important part of the movie ended with the help of his associates and assistants, so that the end of many a poorly written, which is my only objection to this otherwise outstanding mock action-war movie . I told him of one to ten I give 8 only because of the end of the movie.

So much more could've been done

[mcustic2001 · 5/10 · 27 January 2012]

The Yugoslav film industry used to churn out WWII partisan sagas without any regard for factuality, probably best illustrated by the likes of Partizanska eskadrila. However, Doktor Mladen follows the actual life of Dr. Mladen Stojanovic with great veracity.

And an amazing life it was! He was imprisoned by the Austrians as a member of the organization that assassinated the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Later he completed medical studies in Vienna. As a doctor in Prijedor, Bosnia, he often treated patients from the surrounding countryside pro bono.

Although a member of the local elite and an avid tennis player ( a sure mark of a bourgeois in pre-WWII Yugoslavia), he joined the worker's movement and the antifascist communist partisans when the war broke out. He was murdered, allegedly by people that knew him well, while recovering from a wound sustained in an ambush.

However, the director and the writer didn't make much of this story. The entire film felt dated even at the time. Even the superb cast can't make much of the bad writing and many of the scenes feel downright amateurish in the way the stage is set and cameras are handled. The few battle scenes are definitely the worst, suffering from the usual "UUURAAAH!" syndrome - that is the partisans don't win through superior guerrilla tactics, but through charging at the better armed Nazis across an open field.

Overall, the movie leaves the viewer certain that much more could've been done with this man's amazing life story.

Fairly uninspiring war movie about Yugoslav partisans

[pethog-27673 · 5/10 · 3 September 2018]

This film is about a group of Yugoslav partisans led by a doctor who fight against the occupying Nazi German army and their fascist ustasha Croat allies during 1941 and 1942. Most of the plot revolves around Doctor Mladen's relationship with the people in the villages (all very simple, poor and uneducated people), and how he recruits and arms his troops among them. An important point of the plot is that Mladen is a communist partisan who is not only opposed by the Nazis and their allies but also by Serb chetniks. The latter fight the ustashas themselves but support the Yugoslav kingdom and hate Tito's communists even more than they hate the invaders and the ustashas who slaughter civilians, mostly old men and women. No reason is given where this hatred comes from and consequently this is not presented plausibly. Similarly the movie gives no proper explanation why the chetniks decide to collaborate with the German occupants. Thus an important part of the plot remains unconvincing. In reality these relationships probably had much to do with conflicts between the different ethnic groups in Yugoslavia, but the movie essentially ignores this aspect completely. Instead it apparently tries to claim that the conflict between the groups is due political/ideological differences (royalist versus communist), but this isn't developed either. Overall the characterisations are rather one-dimensional and shallow. There's the partisans who are the good guys. The Nazis and the ustashas are the bad guys. The chetniks are even more despicable than they are since they betray their own people apparently just because they oppose communism. Finally the peasants in the villages are passive bystanders who are terrorised by the bad guys. Nobody really exhibits any personality beyond this. The story is very simple and predictable. The doctor takes up arms against the invaders, recruits and arms his partisan group, fights against the fascists, and falls at the end not because he is defeated by the Germans but because he is ambushed by traitors. All in all, not a story that absolutely had to be told. The acting is okay. Not awful but nothing special. The normal peasants in the movie are clearly not played by actors but by simple rural people, which is one aspect of the film that I liked. The action scenes are odd, very different from Hollywood action movies. There is a lot of shooting from pistols, rifles and machine guns and throwing of hand granades, as well as a scene with an air attack with bombs being dropped on peasants and their cows and the partisans in between. However, there is no blood or gore at all. Those who are shot or otherwise injured just fall over theatrically, often clutching their invisible wounds. So while there is a lot of fighting and plenty of pyrotechnics, it is all fairly unspectacular even for the time. To sum it up, a typical socialist propaganda war movie with few interesting qualities. It isn't awful but neither is it excellent in any respect. A really average movie which I rate as a strong 5. I would recommend watching it if you are interested in old war movies, just for its historical value.