Réalisation:
Michal KollárPhotographie:
Kacper FertaczMusique:
Petr OstrouchovActeurs·trices:
Maciej Stuhr, Oldřich Kaiser, Marián Geišberg, Martin Finger, Michal Suchánek, Zuzana Kronerová, Helena Krajčiová, Ladislav Chudík (plus)Résumés(1)
1992. Three years after the fall of the Berlin wall; six months before the split of Czecho-Slovakia. Homicide detective Richard Krauz, 32 years old, is desperate to distinguish himself from the police of the previous regime. One notable notch in his belt is the capture of serial killer Ondrej "The Beast". During grounds-keeping at an old cemetery, a corpse with a nail driven through its skull is disinterred. The body belongs to an old church clerk, Karol Klokner. With help from silent witness (and Klokner's former "autumn" lover) Ms. Marika, the detective soon discovers that he was tortured and murdered by former Secret Police – the StB. Crossing the point of no return in his career and personal life, Krauz finds himself mixed up in something that involves not only the highest levels of the STB but also the Catholic Church. These seemingly opposite entities have, in fact, been cooperating for years. The only person who can shine more light into the case is Klokner's torturer, a man code-named "The Red Captain", a notoriously psychotic "expert on final interrogations" who is a living testament to the former sins of the two co-operating organizations. Krauz is about to learn a heart-crushing lesson about the importance of recognizing the shades of grey in the newly formed "red free" country. (texte officiel du distributeur)
(plus)Vidéo (4)
Critiques (4)
Malgré un solide casting tchéco-slovaco-polonais, l’intrigue est lourde, alambiquée et prise de tête. L’ambiance est plutôt bien construite, mais il y a plein de scènes stupides et un nombre exagéré de personnages qui empêche d’approfondir ceux qui en auraient besoin. Le spectateur se fait par ailleurs légèrement entuber par l’agitation médiatique de l’hameçon Kaiser, étant donné que celui-ci ne se montre finalement pas beaucoup à l’écran. Un petit trois étoiles.
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Michal Kollár made a fan tribute to his favorite book series (from the pen of mythical Slovak bestseller Dominik Dán). As a standalone film, The Red Captain simply doesn't work, and pulling just one story out of the whole cycle didn't work very well. At first glance, it looks like a backwoods TV crime drama; at second glance, one can discover an ambitious work with the realities of 1992. Although the likes of Kaiser, Geišberg, Finger, Chudík or Kronerová were able to create interesting characters even from what little they had, their overall interactions don't work. Maciej Stuhr in the lead role is problematic, we don't know his motivation, but we know we should consider him the protagonist. Suchánek plays like a parody and his tough talk cannot be trusted. Still, the questions and white spaces that arise can inspire one to gain familiarity with the book's world. And that is probably the only and primary good thing about it.
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The scenes with Suchánek are good. The scenes with Kaiser are good. Overall, in hindsight, it really resembles some Nordic detective story with drive, but I can't help feeling that the story seemed somewhat strange to me, a big bubble for nothing, where the ending is weak, although the scene at the train stations was very well done. The details are good, but the whole is not so good.
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A very strange movie. That was the first thing that I thought after I watched The Red Captain. Quite a good premise was destroyed by non-sensical and hard-to-follow story telling, which turns it into something more than what it really is. On the other hand, the actors definitely deserve your attention – they are simply terrific. The actors I personally appreciated the most were Oldřich Kaiser and Michal Suchánek, whose roles were the biggest surprises to me. But Maciej Stuhr was superb as well - he allegedly had to learn to speak Slovak because of this movie. Another thing is that only seldom do you get to see a Czech movie that is shot in Hollywood form. However, in action sequences, this form borders on the embarrassing because Oldřich Kaiser’s escape from the scene is probably the easiest escape I have ever seen. Kaiser jumps out of a window under which there is about eight meters of space and in a nanosecond he drives away from the scene. The film has several other moments like this and it loses a lot of its value. Still, the movie is a very nice surprise and I really enjoyed it despite its illogicality.
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Annonces