Kontroll
by Nimrod Antal
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DVD details
Actor: Sandor Csanyi, Zoltan MucsiDirector: Nimrod Antal
Brand: Image Entertainment
Cinematographer: Gyula Pados
Editor: István Király
Producer: Tamás Hutlassa
Writer: Jim Adler
Writer: Nimród Antal
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Subtitled); Hungarian (Original Language)
Format: NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 106 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-07-27
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: IMAGE/THINKFILMS
DVD Reviews of Kontroll
DVD Review: "Life is a dream, even in the underworld"
Summary: 4 Stars
Kontroll would have to be one of the most visually arresting and eye-catching films of the year. All the elements are there - mystery, suspense, and humor, it's just a pity that first time director Nimrod Antal's first film, which has fantasy, thriller, and dark-comic elements, couldn't have been a bit better paced.
Some of the scenes are excessively long, and the movie sort of sinks in the middle, as though Antal just can't sustain the tension that he so marvelously creates throughout the first half. Having said that, Kontroll is a mostly rewarding viewing experience, and contains some of the most slickly drawn action sequences that one is likely to see in a movie.
Kontroll opens as a boozy blond struggles to open a champagne bottle as she descends into the Budapest subway. She's barely able to stand up, let alone balance on her high heels; she is seemingly knocked over by the rush of air from an arriving train. Suddenly she vanishes and only one of her red shoes remains.
Enter the ticket controllers who patrol the subway day and night. They are told to be on the look out for "jumpers." Apparently, this girl is just the latest in a long line of people who have been inexplicably jumping onto the tracks. Or have they? One ticket inspector, Bulcsú (Sándor Csányi) swears he has seen a hooded man lurking about as another victim falls before a speeding train.
The scruffy and unshaven Bulcsú doesn't dare go above ground; he doesn't even bother to report what he's seen. Instead, he spends his days traipsing through this underground netherworld together with his mismatched collection of colleagues, who move along in pack that sometimes resembles an aging street gang.
There's the quick-tempered Muki (Csaba Pindroch) a narcoleptic with a face stained with tomato sauce, and a burned-out old man simply known as the Professor (Zoltan Mucsi). There's also the newest arrival, the impetuous Tibor (Zsolt Nagy), whom Bulcsú takes under his wing.
Bulcsú soon finds himself having to contend with rival crews of ticket takers, a prankster (Bence Matyasi) who keeps eluding Bulcsú and leads him on a race through the subway stations. In one suspenseful sequence, Bulcsú is challenged to go railing: jumping down onto the tracks in a race to the next platform before the midnight expresses approaches from behind.
Bulcsú is also entranced by Sjofi (Eszter Balla), who wears a bear costume, and apparently lives underground, like him. But Bulcsú is the reluctant anti-hero, not only is he frightened of going above ground, but there's something in his past that prevents him from getting too close to people. It's only when he is able to confront his inner demons that he can finally face the light of day.
Is Bulcsú actually the killer? Or is it all just the dark, subversive, and fearful sides of his personality? His paranoid bosses certainly suspect that he knows something about the murders. Partly because he seems so detached, partly because he's a former intellectual and professional who abandoned a promising future aboveground for unknown reasons, and also because he's a surly outsider who, sleeps during breaks on abandoned benches and in the far tunnels.
Completely set in the bowls of the underground transport system, Kontroll is an absurdly and totally maddeningly existential film, It's where a woman inconspicuously rides the train in a bear suit, after-hour raves parties materialize to pulsating dance beats, and men discuss a cooking recipe while cleaning body parts off the track. It's also a movie that is peppered with some of the sexiest and grooviest young men I've ever seen!
This is a very heavily stylized film and is far from realistic, with Antal and cinematographer Gyula Pados shooting the Budapest underground with a gritty and rich detail that gives the film a strange and beguiling mixture of the authentic and hallucinatory.
The film is mostly a type of psychological fantasy, a kind of dream-movie in which we see the world of the kontroll through Bulcsú's eyes, experiencing this underground, subversive, and anti-establishment world - its horrors and possible deliverance - from his embattled and beleaguered point of view. Mike Leonard September 05.
Description of Kontroll
The budapest subway system the worlds second oldest is a dark labyrinthine netherworld as vast & various as the city above it. Of the hordes of people there most are going to better brighter places. But there are the controllers who ensure that no passengers ride without paying. Studio: Image Entertainment Release Date: 10/23/2007 Run time: 106 minutes Rating: RThe setting of Kontroll is the Budapest subway system, one of the largest and oldest in the world, and a place that becomes an omniscient character in an ambitious film that jumbles dark comedy, slick action, and horror-movie conventions. The other main character is Bulcsú (Sándor Csányi), part of a team of disheveled ticket inspectors--controllers--who roam the grimy, fluorescent-lit city-under-the-city in a soul-destroying ritual. The job has become such a part of Bulcsú that he never leaves the underground. He has taken to sleeping on empty platforms and getting progressively more unkempt as he accumulates more bruises, bloody noses, and bitterness from his scraps with a variety of unseemly creatures of the night (and day). Among the post-punk, post-communist habitués of this subterranean metropolis are a cute girl in a teddy-bear suit, a rival gang of ticket inspectors who like to play a deadly game of chicken with express trains, and a hooded specter who may or may not be pushing people under subway wheels at crowded stops. First-time director Nimród Antal keenly juggles black comedy, character types, and genre styles, making the most of the weird angles and inherent dark creepiness of his chosen backdrop. Kontroll keeps pace as a hip, flashy, fast-moving set piece by any international measure. --Ted Fry
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