Bullhead (2011) User Reviews

A Dark Tour-de-Force

[pelhamc · 8/10 · 12 July 2016]

Welcome to the world of Bullhead, a brolick Belgian bodybuilder who is a mess of musculature, 'roid rage, and regret. Castrated in youth by a bully, his farmer parents followed medical advice to put him on bovine growth hormones--a type of steroid. As an adult, he is a caricature of a life, amidst the underground world of the black market steroid trade in Belgium. This is a foreign language film in the crime drama genre, with English subtitles.

Bullhead's Belgium is a place of secrets and shadows. The byzantine plot twists and turns with pain and angst, as law enforcement surveils drug dealers through the use of informants and technology. There is a romantic subplot as we see his adult development choked by his paradoxical being. It's a portrait of a man in a struggle to live within a toxic environment. The protagonist is an anti-hero.

I really liked this one. It's different from standard fare. It shows crime in an unglamorous light. It takes you into a strange world, hidden from the mainstream. It's dramatic and poignant, with a well-constructed plot. It's Friends of Eddie Coyle meets The Incredible Hulk meets The Nothing Man. This one is for Refn fans. Bullhead is recommended viewing.

Terrific realism, though the plot pushes too hard at times for sensation

[secondtake · 8/10 · 7 June 2013]

Bullhead (2011)

A tough, sometimes horrifyingly violent, but ultimately moving tale about a man caught up in a world of crime and violence. And it began in childhood, which is revealed in some key, difficult flashbacks. All of it is set in Belgium, and is multi-lingual (French and Dutch), and it has a European kind of gangster crime world that is quite different than the Hollywood way of depicting American versions of the same.

These are all strong reasons to watch it. I found myself confused by the many characters because part of the style is to offer a series of different situations, all related, and have the viewer put it together. While this is a million times better than movies that explain too much, there were many times that I was just watching and waiting to see how it would make sense later.

And the acting is so wonderful, and the general style of filming so beautiful without being distracting, you can really get absorbed even without knowing the details of the plot. The leading man in particular is a steroidal, muscled up guy who plays a brute, but who is deeply troubled inside due to a childhood incident. While you never quite are on his side, you come to feel for his situation. The various thugs around him are not always so sympathetic, but all of them are regular guys at heart, and you generally see them as people, not as criminal stereotypes.

In this way, the movie is a little like "The Killing" (a mid-fifties Kubrick film) or "Reservoir Dogs" (the 1990s Tarantino film). While you don't follow a heist step by step, you do get to see the characters behind the crimes as more important than the crimes. There is even a bit of comic relief in "Bullhead" with the pair of car mechanics who bumble just enough to make you laugh.

A great film? Not really, but it has elements that point that way. I think many people will totally love it, the way it's made, the aura of easy realism. Some might find the central childhood trauma a bit excessive (it's really brutal and a bit over the top, but yet believable), and others might see the complicated relationships between criminals, innocents, and cops a bit too fuzzy. But it all has total purpose, and if you give it time it will justify itself, right up to the tense ending.

An outstanding performance in a devastating story

[irinafiruti · 8/10 · 31 March 2020]

Leaving the hormones mafia in the meat industry story aside, I find what makes this film unique is an unprecedented ( at least for me) approach of the devastation the loss of manhood can bring. We come into this world either as men or women and this is part of our human experience in such an essential way that when this is disrupted we can see that it leaves us only half human. Jacky Vanmarsenille fills the other half with a bull-like persona which makes him unfit for living among "normal" humans. Simply injecting you a substance normally secreted in the body doesn't restore your wholeness as a manly (or womanly) human being especially if you misuse of it as he does. So he gains size and mass but the emptiness left by the lack of the precise manly dimension is but deepening the more his physical aspect reaches monstrousity. His lack of control over himself adds to this. He is enormously tragic and Matthias Schoenaerts is caring all the tragedy of the character, all the sorrow, in his eyes, in his look, as he always does in his acting - only this time even the eyes are halved as he only has the left one to serve him, probably as a reflection of his all-over halveness. So if you want to grasp all the turmoil the character is living in just don't loose contact with his look! Brilliant!

Some people here where shocked by the ending but at a certain point I was sure this is what was going to happen (the end of Michael Douglas's Falling Down came up to my mind), there was no other possible end as Jackie simply wasn't belonging, simply did not fit "normal" people since long, since that doomed day in his childhood. It's the story of a destruction that starts violently, abrupt one day, progresses through all he does trying to overcome the tragic event, hoping he will trick his fate somehow but fails it .

Easily the best film I have seen at Melbourne Film Fest 2011

[sharkies69 · 4 August 2011]

You really do have to tick all the boxes for this film. Start with the screenplay, it almost feels as if you could be reading a great crime/noir novel. Very few screenplays have that type of feel anymore. Lots of conflict and flesh and blood characters. Speaking of which, the actor portraying Jacky does an amazing job in what must have been a very difficult role to play. Apart from the screenplay and acting, the direction and photography is also of a high order. It takes a special script and director to get you to care about the characters and I felt this one long after I'd left the cinema. It packs a real emotional punch.

Without giving too much away, the story revolves around a rural Belgian family who are in the cattle business. They manage to get caught up in the illegal use of hormones in their animals, the drugs supplied by typically nasty underworld figures.

What really makes this film so riveting is the gripping and harrowing back story involving several of the main characters.

I believe this works as a crime film, drama and even part revenge flick. There is also a doomed love story.

I really hope this film gets a wide release as it certainly deserves it. I look forward to more films from this director.

Good but grim

[paul2001sw-1 · 7/10 · 21 September 2014]

There's a clever idea at the heart of 'Bullhead': in a story about the trade in illegal cattle hormones, the central character is, as a result of a painful childhood incident, himself dependent on exogenous testosterone. This is one of a number of Belgian films that paint a very harsh picture of the country: grey, gloomy, run-down, divided and rotten to the core: the focus of agribusiness (and its mechanical approach to life, and death) is unusual and makes for a distinctive subject. However, it's hard to warm to the pumped-up protagonist, and if there is a message here it's all negative: stay away from other people, don't live in Belgium, and perhaps even don't eat meat.

Matthias Schoenaerts, remarkable performance & Jacky's Haunting past will leave you speechless

[saadgkhan · 9/10 · 10 July 2012]

Rundskop – BullHead – CATCH IT (A) Belgian "Rundskop" is nothing what I had expected to be a movie about a cattle farmer. It turns out to be something beyond I had ever imagined. Rundskop is about a young cattle farmer Jacky Vanmarsenille (Matthias Schoenaerts), who is constantly pumped on steroids and hormones and initiates a shady deal with a notorious mafia in meat trader. The new set of events takes Jacky to his mysterious shocking past. To be honest even writing this gives me chills, I cannot believe what happened with him is anyway mentionable or thinkable. Rundskop features one of the most disturbing and beyond shocking scenes of the celluloid's history. After watching that it made me sick to my stomach and even now it's almost a week since I saw that but I cannot forget it. The brutality of that moment and its after effects on Jacky's life is remarkably portrayed in Rundskop. Matthias Schoenaerts as Jacky Vanmarsenille is remarkable, talk about Oscar worthy performance here. His pain, anger, loneliness and wanting to be loved can be seen through Matthias Schoenaerts's eyes and physicality. I don't have words for his performance so here is what famous critic Rodger Ebert says ""The one excellent aspect of the film is Matthias Schoenaerts' performance. We often follow him walking in a controlled lurch from side to side, as if merely walking is not enough of a challenge for him. We see his eyes, burning with pain. The film impresses because of the pain, sadness and rage contained in the title performance by Flemish actor Matthias Schoenaerts, who bulked up for the role (without steroids), and seems ready to burst from his clothes and even his skin." Te performance by all the supporting cast including young Jacky "Robin Valvekens" is admirable. In the end, Rundskop is an intense thriller/drama filled with a remarkable performance by Matthias Schoenaerts which makes me want to see all his previous and upcoming movies.

Impressive but muddled

[theskylabadventure · 6/10 · 2 July 2015]

Bullhead is an extremely frustrating film. It sports an incredible performance by Matthias Schoenaerts as a lonely Belgian farmer struggling to cope with an emotionally isolated existence and haunted by an insurmountably troubled past. To say any more would be a total spoiler. As a piece of character drama, this is seriously affecting stuff, made all the more distressing by a truly world- class performance. This would have been enough for a terrific movie.

However, the waters are muddied by various other superfluous plot strands; an investigation into the use of steroids in beef, local gangsters killing cops, low-rent hoodlums selling stolen tyres, a gay police informant who also happens to be a long-lost childhood friend, and a slightly implausible love interest. While any of these ideas may have borne fruit in their own movie, the result here is definitely less than the sum of its parts, not least because the aptly sombre tone of the main story is compromised by the intrusion of these other events.

Michaël R. Roskam is definitely a director to watch, and I suspect Bullhead will become an interesting curiosity to visit in the context of a great director taking his first steps. Ultimately, the weakness here is in the writing. Roskam's next movie was 'The Drop' (with Matthias Schoenaerts again awesome in a supporting role), which was adapted from a short story by Dennis Lehane and, for my money, is an infinitely superior movie, largely because it doesn't suffer from the same cluttered over-plotting. Like Anton Corbijn , tone and emotion are clearly Roskam's forté and I for one am excited to see what he delivers next.

Technical merits for the blu ray are first rate, and the 'making of' piece is watchable, if nothing special.

A Brilliant, Brutal, Sad, Fantastic, and Hard-To-Watch, Incredible Display of Acting and Directing

[iwanna_know · 9/10 · 21 July 2012]

I stumbled across this movie last night, and, although I'd no idea who the director or any of the actors are, based on the reviews, and especially the trailer, I decided to take a look.

I'm both sorry and glad I did.

I think the lead actor in this movie, Matthias Schoenaerts (who, incidentally, should have been cast as Bane in Batman Rises. He IS Bane) has a bright future in Hollywood. Certainly I know I'll be checking out his other movies, now that I'm aware of him.

Bullhead constantly threw me for a loop and kept me on my toes all at the same time.

The obvious simpatico between director Michael R. Roskam and Mr. Schoenaerts is evident in the constant tension and slight unease that's able to be maintained throughout the entire movie, even during the "softer" (if you can call them that) moments of the film. The scenes of Jacky, alone in his room/apartment are very powerful.

Jacky's alienation and rage make us, the viewer both nervous, as though he'll somehow be able to reach through the screen and bring us, kicking and screaming into his brutal world, and sympathetic as we're able to see the reason for this young man's pain.

The Oscar nomination (I've forgotten if it won or not, but if it didn't it should have) was well deserved, and I look forward to great things from this wonderful young actor.

Hoss.

This Movie Is in a Very Bad Mood

[evanston_dad · 7/10 · 11 July 2023]

Good grief this movie is in a bad mood.

Matthias Schoenaerts gives a valiant performance in this total downer of a film. He plays a man who suffered an unimaginable childhood trauma (I could barely even watch the scene, even without it being super explicit) that has left him sterile as an adult, and goes about overcompensating for his feelings of male inadequacy in ways that are about as pleasant as you would think they are.

In fact, this movie is full of men overcompensating for feelings of male inadequacy, which leaves me to wonder, what the heck is going on in Belgium? Or was in 2011 when this movie was made. But then I think, oh wait, look at all the ways that male inadequacy is poisoning the culture of the United States right now, so maybe this movie was just ahead of its time.

And from this film I learned that the animal hormone black market is a thing in Belgium. Again, who knew? I really could have done with less of the gangster angle, which in all honesty didn't even make complete sense to me. The main character's story arc is compelling enough without all the superfluous plot.

"Bullhead" was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2011 Academy Awards.

Grade: B+

An Oscar? Would be well deserved..!

[copykit7 · 9/10 · 20 January 2012]

The kind of movie that hits you in the face. Once you learn the dark childhood-story of the main character, you learn to understand the movie more and more. The images are intense. Actor Matthias Schoenaerts makes an incredible impression.

This movie doesn't use explosions, 3D or other tricks to make you watch. But the powerhouse performances and typical Belgium scenery do.

The movie is set in the hormones and veterinarian mob. But the true story at the heart is one of revenge and the impossibility of love. Enter a raw, but true world. An brilliant Belgium movie. It deserves an Oscar.

PS: For Dutch or French viewers some scenes are actually funny because or the stereotypes and linguistic jokes.

Think twice before you see this one...

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 20 July 2012]

I am NOT saying that "Bullhead" is a bad film or that you should not see it. However, my summary is an important thing to consider, as the film is very violent and very disturbing. In addition to very realistic violence, there is a rather disturbing scene of a cow receiving a Caesarian--so it's obviously not a Disney flick!

It is NOT a film for kids or those who don't have a high tolerance for such material. So, think twice before you give this one a viewing. Frankly, it made me cringe at times and I have a rather high tolerance.

"Bullhead" is about folks who are criminals--thieves, killers and violent sociopaths. The film focuses in particular on Jacky. While he is a violent brute, why he is so violent is an interesting but HIGHLY disturbing story that you see through flashbacks. It seems that when he was a boy, a nasty little sociopathic teen bashed his testicles until they were completely destroyed...just for kicks! As a result, Jacky has spent years injecting himself with testosterone. The steroids and his anger about his childhood have made him a very disturbed man. At the same time, there is another plot involving the car used for a murder and its tires. There also is an old friend of Jacky's who owes him...big time. How these all come together is just something you'll have to see for yourself in this complex film.

While I can respect the work the filmmakers did in making this film, overall it was not exactly an enjoyable film nor is it one I'd heartily endorse. It is well made and interesting but also very dark and difficult.

More than a movie, a masterpiece, a work of art....!!

[alexandre_dewit · 10/10 · 18 August 2011]

You do not have to be Belgian to appreciate and be an admirer of this movie. The way it is told, filmed and performed are Oscar worthy....

This the incredibly sad story of Jacky, a farmer who's whole life will be turned upside down following a dramatic and traumatising event in his youth....making him the man (or what's left of it) he is today!

It handles in a very realistic way the animal (cow-bull) drug and hormone maffia and its traffic. Following the lives of several people who are directly affected by it.

The two stories, one the telling of Jacky's way to deal with his trauma and how he suffers from it, how it affected him and the other about the hormone traffic are brilliantly melt together to a story that will leave no one insensitive!!

AMAZING!!

Meat is murder

[deastman_uk · 7/10 · 21 February 2013]

There are plenty of unsettling features of this simple tragic film, but all are treated with equanimity. Unless you are familiar with the Belgian hormone mafia, the first 20 minutes or so of this film winds up slowly until it is released. There are themes that remind me of Almodovar, but with the light sucked out.

The secret of storytelling is what to leave out, and the decisions about what to leave to the viewer seem perfect. Time is spent on the emotions of a man rendered incapable of a normal outlet, and how the few people around him compensate.

Matthias Schoenaerts as the protagonist is excellent, but this film owes everything to it's tight direction.

(Language plays quite an important part in the film, and the audience is required to recognise the difference between the two Belgian languages.)

Boring long Flemish hormone boot legger film

[peru1-595-630106 · 1/10 · 25 June 2013]

This movie is about the exciting intrigue of illegal growth hormone use in cows...and centers on a ball-less main character who uses this hormone expertise and connections to inject himself with testosterone which he lacks. Apparently the police are out to stop the growth hormone use and a cop gets killed. There is a long sequence involving a BMW 5 series and tires that was obscure but by that time I couldn't care less what was going on and couldn't make myself rewind or whatever it would take to understand things.

My God have they exhausted every possible story line to come up with this???

I liked the comment that said this movie looks like it was shot with an old Nokia phone camera....not only that it is endless following some very rural looking Flemish hicks engaged in this less than exciting crime and cops which are hard to tell from the hormone boot leggers.

After about 30 minutes you decide this thing is hopelessly slow and boring.

Strangely this movie seems to have made all the international film festivals---the main character whose privates don't work has a crush on the sister of the guy that did it to him...

Character development unfortunately fails and you don't give a s!@t about the protagonist or any of the characters in this boring thing. I think the problems with it are it is so visually uninteresting and so slow moving that some how you just don't develop any rapport especially with the muscle bound protagonist who injects some testosterone and then starts shadow boxing every 10 minutes. There must be an hour of film showing close ups of his face with what looks like a broken nose.

At about an hour I fast forwarded it to the very end to see what happens...The main character injects and takes every known steroid then turns into the hulk attacking the police and is shot.

DO NOT RECOMMEND

Oscar Material

[jorningmarstaal · 22 October 2011]

I made an account solely for this movie, a true tragic, mesmerizing Movie. It really is a must see. I think it has a very high change being nominated for the Oscars as best foreign movie and maybe even winning it. Another reviewer posted something about silence moments in this movie but really, even without saying much, you can feel the pain and tragedy the main characters went through. Brilliant performance by Matthias Schoenaerts and , amongst others, Frank Lammers.

I do think however the spoken language might be a bit of a barrier for non-Flemish/dutch speakers because I feel that a lot of the words and sentences spoken here add to the drama; translation tends to loose that drama. (I can give a few examples but that would be a spoiler) I predict that this movie will be remade/re shot in English (pity) for a broader audience.

10/10 for me

Two stories, too little time.

[punishmentpark · 6/10 · 7 July 2013]

Now, what do we have here? On the one hand, we start off hearing a gloomy monologue of the main character speaking of fate, how it can not be avoided and everything will turn to *poop* - as Belgian farmers generally may or may not be inclined to believe...? Then straight after, we are pulled into the story of the hormone mafia (to increase meat production, cows are given hormone injections, and the murder of an investigator is based on the true case of Karel van Noppen), but pay attention, because it is kind of hard to follow. Then, after some time, we go back twenty years in time and learn of a completely different story, which also goes back to the opening monologue of the film, and (among other things) a connection between the main character and a criminal / informant is explained.

These two stories could have worked together, but it just hardly feels rightly combined in this film. At times I wished they had made this into a TV-series, because many characters and issues deserved so much more elaborating. And, I speak of two stories, but there's actually much more going on (for instance a sort of love story and the police doing a sting operation), so 129 minutes is the least they could have used.

The most important scene in all this seems to be the brutal beating of main character's privates Jacky at a young age. It's sheer shock value can't be denied, and everything after seems like kid's stuff(!); in any case it puts the story of the hormone mafia (and the police chasing them) in a shady corner. If only that story had died down in the film, but unfortunately, it didn't.

And then there are these strangely humorous (I do believe they might be quite Belgian) moments, e.g. the religious vision of Jacky, the gay man (accidentally?) farting on the phone and the police woman's reaction to it, the main character asking the same (gay) man if he's gay and the gay man trying to hide his true identity; in themselves not really funny moments, but more reminiscent of a film like Fargo, where funny meets real, sort of.

Finally, the gloomy look of the film is pretty much spot on, I enjoyed it, as well as pretty much all of the acting. But all in all, this is a tough one to give a good rating. There's just too much mixing in the story lines to be truly convinced, although I did easily sit it out.

Hard to Come By

[palmiro · 10/10 · 16 November 2012]

I found this film remarkable for its ability to stir feelings of sympathy for a kind of character who seems utterly brutish and unredeemable. Jacky is a brute, the kind of man who all too often resorts to abominable acts of violence when he's aroused. And yet, thanks to the portrait of Jacky drawn by the director and by the actor, we cannot help but feel great sorrow for him. Yes, Jacky does terrible, terrible things over the course of the film, but by the end I was sobbing for him. Maybe it's simply "tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner", but whatever that emotion was I felt at the film's end it was something that revealed to me (and one would hope to all who see this film) a terrifying and redemptive bond of common humanity.

compelling character

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 23 June 2016]

Jacky Vanmarsenille is a muscle-bound cattle farmer. He injects illegal hormones into his cattle and into himself. He deals with the underworld of illegal meats and illegal hormones. A cop investigating illegal hormones is killed by the meat mafia. A stolen car with a bullet hole is fixed up by two mechanics. Jacky is tangentially connected to the incident. He is obsessed with Lucia Schepers who is the basis of a childhood trauma 20 years earlier.

The disjointed nature of the story makes it difficult to maintain the tension. The flow is constantly disrupted. The childhood incident is shocking and it makes the characters more compelling. It would be helpful to be clearer and more straight forward in the storytelling. He's a compelling character but the story is too disjointed.

Belgian Masterpiece..

[Ramascreen · 10/10 · 24 February 2012]

This is one dark drama that blows my mind, it is that damn good! Wrapped in a blanket of revenge and crime tale is a heart-wrenching unrequited love story and Actor Matthias Schoenaerts gives a towering performance as a man who doesn't feel like he could fully function because of a certain childhood tragedy that left him traumatized for the rest of his life. Everything about this movie, from the direction to the design to the cinematography has Oscars written all over it. Hollywood could not come up with a story as powerful as this… Gripping, from start to finish, writer/director Michael Roskam created this character Jacky (Schoenaerts) who's extremely complex, engulfed in anger and sadness and despair, all those emotions just screaming to get out of their protective wall that is Jacky's massive, intimidating physical appearance. The tragedy that Roskam presents is the kind that you wouldn't easily shake off or forget for days after. I as a male viewer, find that particular scene disturbing and painful to watch. So much so that you share Jacky's anger, you'd find it easy to justify his actions, and you'd want him to enact his revenge and throw whatever mercy he has left out the window and all because he was not given a chance of mercy as a kid. Roskam has created a tragedy so deeply affecting that it makes it difficult for the audience to accept the idea that the story might take a detour down redemption lane because revenge seems like a much more comforting option. BULLHEAD is also somewhat a gangster film, it's also got its own murder mystery, undercover cop, and it's set in a rural farming community and so the mob depicted in this film doesn't look as stylized as the mob that you grew up watching in Hollywood cinema. In BULLHEAD, the bad guys are just trying to get by, just like everybody else. At one point, Jacky looks at the cattle in the barn and compares their lives as humans to the cattle, which serves as this film's profundity His friend helps him do his final bidding, that which he hopes would turn out as planned, sadly his presence is met with fear by the woman he professes to, which brings him to the conclusion that he could never escape his damaged condition, which is why the end scene makes the entire film feels even more distressing, some stories and some characters are just not meant to end on a happy note. BULLHEAD is a one of a kind masterpiece.

A Very Good Movie from Belgium

[lasgalletas · 7/10 · 29 February 2012]

I haven't seen a lot of Belgian movies and honestly I haven't seen even one before so Rundskop is an one big surprise for me. Not that i didn't believe that Belgian cinematography exists but...anyway. I have to say that I have never been to Belgium so here's my out-of-Belgium very short review. This movie is about young Flemish cattle farmer, beefy guy who acts crazy and weird and has a sort of a story behind him, deep story that determines everything - his behavior, his way of life or way of doing business. Even camera work is trying to show a world around him in a pretty dark and dull way. Scenario is well-balanced, criminal story is good and has an actual background as a base. Matthias Schoenaerts playing his role great, dark and weird but great and I believe he has a future. From Rundskop i'll keep an eye on Belgian movies!

"Now, tomorrow, next week and next year, until the end of time." (Spoilers ahead!)

[fathersonholygore · 10/10 · 15 April 2013]

There is something about Rundskop (English title: Bullhead) that cuts right to the core of my being. I can understand why some people may not enjoy the film: for some it is a slow moving bore, and to others it ends on a disappointing note. For me, however, I find it to be a beautiful piece of art. Not only is the cinematography well done, but the film itself is written quite well; I found the story compelling, and also tragic in an almost Shakespearean way. As everything unfolded, I didn't find my mind searching for a who, or why, but simply awaited the what- what was going to happen here?

Having seen Matthias Schoenaerts while not knowing who he was in other films, here he commands the screen, and the intensity of his performance is at times suffocating. Jacky is jacked up on steroids and hormones; we find out that it's not simply for lifting weights in vanity, but because of an unfortunate assault he suffered as a young boy at the hands of an older boy. The tragedy of the accident left Jacky a victim without any repercussions against the perpetrator, and a stunted manhood in more than one way. It also separated him from his good boyhood friend who later turns up as a police informant, and accidentally drops back in on Jacky's life, albeit not by choice. Schoenaerts plays an amazingly subdued role at times, and at others he explodes with the ferocity of a man filled with years of built-up sexual frustration crossed with a system brimming with testosterone. The film itself rests on the portrayal of Jacky, but it is lined with a great story about the hormone mafia he comes in contact with. I found Rundskop to be one of the best and most unique crime films I've seen in awhile; also serving as a fine character study of a deeply emotional situation in a troubled man's life. The ending blew me away. Not only did the plot itself end with great intensity, but the final images of Jacky absolutely enthralled me, and I've since rewound the final scenes over and over again to capture that moment where he absolutely implodes while simultaneously exploding. 10 out of 10. Highly recommend to anyone looking to see a different crime film, and a spectacular breakout performance.

Caution is a must for any guy to watch this!

[maximkong · 7/10 · 18 November 2012]

However I will have to agree that it packs enough intensity and dark, heart-wrenching material to qualify as a contestant for the foreign film category. On the surface, it is about a shady deal gone wrong but the film chose not to focus too much on the details of the underworld and the ensueing investigations, hence I would not categorise it as a crime film.

Instead, what makes this film worked as a successful character study are the back stories of certain characters, and how recent happenings intensifies the after-effects of the past. On another note, Matthias truly excelled in his difficult role as a torn-apart man whose emotions are dictated like those of an animal due to his conditions. My only main issue is the pace, As i feel the film could deliver more than what meets the eye if it could have been slightly faster.

To put it simply...a masterpiece

[contrerasjose6 · 10/10 · 2 March 2012]

I admit I was not ready for what this movie had to offer. It absolutely blew me away. The story never reveals anything before it has to, so you will find yourself clutching your armrest in anticipation.

An extremely well-done film in which everything from the story to the camera shots will compel you to become part of the story, to live the moments with the characters. The film provides opportunities to chuckle at times, and look on in disbelief at others.

As the credits rolled and the theater emptied out, I found myself staring at the screen attempting to take in what I had just experienced. I went in having read reviews about an overall very good film, but those reviews fell short. This is a masterpiece.

A full story about half a man

[jefflouvre-435-77367 · 6/10 · 29 July 2012]

THIS is a story about shattered innocence couched in a murder mystery. Everything else is extraneous to the main theme of this Belgian flick.

The movie opens with a scene of a muscular naked man and vials of something. The nakedness is not just for show, but will reveal everything about this character and movie later.

You see, he's a beefcake, but also only half a man. A teen smashed his testicles when he was kid and he had to use testosterone to keep up the appearance of looking like a man.

There's a poignant scene when the boy, realizing what his life will become, imagines that the crucifix of Jesus Christs on the wall is bleeding in the crotch.

A normal man would die to have a body like this farmer, but the farmer can only pine to be with a woman. He declines a friend's invitation to go to brothel, and just watches the whore in the shopfront with a longing look.

His brother says he prevents others from making fun of him, from calling him: "That's the bastard without balls."

Him taking the hormone also makes him an angry man, and him killing a man because the latter danced with a woman they both liked is testament to his raging hormones.

The ending is contrived and didn't need that kind of violence. There's a flashback of him as a kid at the end, and that sum's up the movie's theme: a kid trapped in the body of a man. It could also be about the day the life as he knew it ended.

Meaning, sans balls

[deacon_blues-3 · 4/10 · 3 July 2012]

(Sigh!) This is not really a crime drama. It is another futile attempt for Euro existentialists to find meaning in life, especially for a man with no balls. Only an existentialist would even need to ask such a question, since most of them have their minds located in that area in the first place.

Jacky, the son of a beef farmer who likes to inject massive hormones into his animals, loses his twin-boys to a sex-obsessed adolescent son-of-a-mafia-boss named Bruno when he was only around 8 (in a particularly nasty scene involving Jacky's private parts and two rocks!). No one could do anything about the aforementioned nut-cracking incident, so it was filed away as an accident, despite the fact that Jacky's bff, Deiderick, was an eyewitness to the event.

The family doctor especially emphasizes to his parents the importance of little Jacky now being diligent to develop his secondary male attributes through massive hormone supplements, since his primary male attribute is gone with the wind.

Jacky is secretly obsessed with Bruno's sister, Lucia, although he obviously has no means to follow through on his attraction to her. Alas!

Jacky grows up to be a kind of human beef critter himself (hence the title), constantly experimenting with male hormone supplements, seeking to maximize his secondary male attributes to compensate for the lack of his primary one. He becomes a family muscle thug, threatening customers who don't like his father's chemically enhanced cows into buying them anyway.

One intrigue follows another into a tangled web, involving the killing of a cop, the tires from a BMW 5 class, Deiderick's gay lust for a cop named Anthony, Jacky's quest for the perfect men's cologne, etc. I'll leave you to figure out how it all makes any kind of sense.

Late in the film, we see that Bruno the ball-buster has somehow grown up to be an institutionalized human veggie, although I have no idea how he got that way (perhaps I missed it in the subtitles). His sister still visits him, although we wonder why, since he spent most of their childhood (when he wasn't crushing testicles between rocks, that is) trying to force her to be his hooker-for-hire. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Anyway, I was barely able to stay awake for the exciting conclusion, where Jacky finally talks to Lucia, goes into her bathroom and infuses himself with every male hormone known to chemistry, and then commits suicide by cop in Lucia's apartment building elevator.

The film closes with a close-up of Jacky as an 8-year-old, and a fade to black with closing credits. Whatever!

When will existentialists realize that life does not get its meaning from balls, hormones, suicide, or anything else of the kind. Life is meaningful only in reference to the Sovereign Creator and our humble service to Him in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Amen.