You have to know that his series was aired right after the not so well received TV-Series "General", hence the bar was set so low that everything after it that proves to be even slightly better will be overhyped by the audiences, one of the main actors actually played in both productions and its obviouse that the
acting is the same.
The series is directed by Kristijan Milic, a director who did war movies before, so if you liked "broj55" or "zivi i mrtvi" than you already know what to expect.
I watched the first episode yesterday and i could tell from the start that it has slightly better cinematography and better music/sound than General but that doesnt mean it has a good screenplay,
pacing is very slow and it takes way to much time to get to the point where you as in audience will be invested. It is PG15 rather than PG12 which means it has more violent action but i doubt that the shown action is realistic. Scenes, plot and action are very constructed, what i disliked is that too much is filmed up close, you never get some aerial view of the location so you actually never know exactly where they are or about the surroundings they are in. maybe its all filmed at the same location so they hide it this way by not showing aerials. i will not go into the details of the plot and what i disliked in the first episode about it, just to not spoil it for future viewers.
I do hope the story will develop thruh the next episodes to the better and the pacing and action will improve, until then i give this only some average rating so far.
To all the critics that might disagree or get offended, there are 20+year old movies that did a better job in displaying war in the balkans (without any digital tools), THEY should be the bar to reach or to surpas and not some theater-like production that was recently done by an 88year old man who retired decades ago !!!
Stop treating "croatian-film" like an isolated bubble, they have the same equipment at hand like any other international production, its time they learn to use it and step up their game.
UPDATE:
After watching the complete series im totaly dissapointed. If the producers would have focused on the script as much as they did on PublicRelation this could have been a good series, instead its unbelievable how much the producer talks about the script, but nothing of his intentions are actually visible in it, it seems more like that he afterwards whitewashes all the plotholes in his interviews and no way did he worked 10years on this, more like 10mins.
So who is the producer/screenwriter ? Well, he is famouse for being a quiz-master on stateTV, was never to war himself even so he is 48y old and of course his 26y girlfriend got a small role in the series too.
Couldnt be more of a cliche than that. So he teamed up with director Milic whos last film "mrtve ribe" which did cost millions of taxpayer money ended up being watched in cinemas by less than 100 people in croatia.
What could got wrong with a team like that,
as it turns out: everything!
The TV-series, instead of getting better after every episode, they droped the ball right away and turned it into a mess and it got worse and worse, even the final showdown didnt save it for me anymore. They totaly lost me when they integrated some weird woman that seem to symbolize "the angel of death?", there are many more plotholes especially in ep4 which i wont waste my time one, but that mystery-stunt and the unrealisticly filmed end killed it for me.
I wouldnt want to watch this again, not even on a rainy boring day.
