Drumul oaselor

beginning of a legend, portrait of strange hero, drawing of a Romanian history page, it is an interesting film. not only for story but for inspired music and for savage places. for courage to be not only first step of a series but far from idealogical influence. and for art to create portrait of a society who reflects, in too many lines, Romanian present. sure, it may be a kind of western but not that is its virtue. it may be an adventure film or historical but it is not really ambition of director. it is honest and this is secret of its success. it is fresh, ironic and salted , not very polite so, it is delight for each generation. that is all.

This review is written in English even though the movie was released only in Germany, Hungary, and the filmed country Romania. The language of the film is in Romanian only.

Plot: the overall plot is boring. Half of the movie there is not much action. Should you consider give the movie an action-adventure genere...I would think twice before hitting that button.

The actors are super old. We are seeing 51 year old Marga Barbu kissing in the end of the movie with Florin Piersic (44 years old.) It is so unethical and immoral to have a 51 year old actress chosen by "Romaniafilm Prezinta" when there were throusands of other younger and more beautiful actresses in 1980 in Romania. This leads me understand that the actress must have got benefits up high and someone from Ceausescu's regime put her in to play. I am pretty sure that it was done on purpose and this had nothing to do with the producer's choice or even more unfair with the actresses' performance. The voices that are dubbed in the movie are almost as if they are robots and not humans. You have to pause the movie and go back a few times before understanding what they were talking about. The language used in the movie is very elegant though. Words like "spurcat" (spoiled) instead of "violat" (rapped). The name "trandafirul galben" (yellow rose) kinda concides with Alain Delon's movie "laleau neagra" (black tulip) only that black tulip was inspired from Alexander Dumas' novel with the same title. The ending of the movie is very good except the fact that you are so happy to see Agatha Slatineanu (Maarga Barbu) disappearing in the water (even though we don't get to see her but only her hat floating)....and to learn that in 1982 another sequel movie is made called "Trandafirul Galben" (yellow rose) where we see Agatha Slatineanu alive...as if she made it ok in the river ...and yet again now a 53 year old actress was really needed for this continuation. Not only that she is old and ugly, but her voice makes you wanna slap her face and tell her up front: shut the hell up lady. You can't play this movie.

And now here are some highlights of this movie:

1) Actor Florin Piersic played very good. 2) The name of the main character Margelatu (Florin Piersic) sounded very good in Romanian language as almost as it personifying him with Zorro. In fact the entire movie is a western-spagehtti with zorro-ish like similarities (the poor vs the rich.) But the name Margelatu is very creative for 1980. 3) The gun that Margelatu is using looks very cool yet funny due to its size. It make you laugh thinking that such a small calibre will shoot someone from such a long distance. But...it is indeed a movie where we soupposed to believe in its fantasy rather than reality. Funny yet original Margelatu throws spirt/alcohol into the gun to make it look like it is a "hot gun" 4) The sunflower that Margelatu carries while chewing seeds from it...makes it very Romanian and original as a western spaghetti film. This is also similar to the Czechoslovakian western spaghetti movie Lemonade Joe from 1964. In this movie, Joe drinks only lemonade and not alcohol where as Margelatu eats only seeds before starting to shoot his gun.

This is a "48 movie, meaning it is settled in 1848 Romania, a strange period of intellectual idealists and tough adventurers, and is a very good start of an excellent series.I assure you you will love this.It's about a mixed group of idealists and adventurers, with common and personal addenda, which must transport a treasure to help the revolution.Meantime, the correct and intelligent chief of the police, Aga Villara, loyal to the crown, must find the dissidents and stop them before they will make the game of the international corrupted powers, who use the Revolution in order to occupy the Romanian countries...And this is not the only reason for which Villara hunts the group...His personal interest is in the leader, Cpt Baroncea, who tried to kill him for not permitting the Revolution they prepares...