Nestali

Good start. Rest very bad. Teenagers maybe like it. Unrealistic for people who seen true war. Put our soldiers, dead or live, to shame in begining 3 episodes, never shoot bad guy or safe friends. Unheroic. All nonsense. Why dream? Why Lamb? Why gypsy ? Why ghost? Why girlfriend? All stupid.

Sorry my bad english.

These high-star ratings are obviously created by the director, friends and the crew itself, because after the average first episode the TV series went downhill instead of uphill, turned even mystery and has an absolutely cringeworthy corny supernatural end.

However, if you like bad TV series with utterly nonsensical plot and like watching people wandering around for hours, talking pubtalk that isnt even funny, this movie actually might be for you.

This is the second war-themed series in a row we croatians got to see on TV and it established its own flavour of being bad. I would call it General 2.0 because you dont really see where they spent all the production-money on but in defens of General 1.0, it actually teaches you mostly accurate historical facts while this is just made up BS that bores you to death for the most part, or gives you headaches when you try to make sense of how the plot unfolds or should i rather say: implodes.

dont get me even started on the western-music and the joke they ripped of from Predator at the end, oh yes and the lack of bulletholes during the last shootout or how they drove of by night, but than its daylight all of a sudden while still exchanging gunfire. they probably noticed they couldnt use the blue-filter-stuff they used in the 2nd episode to fake a daylight scene into a moonlight scene again because this time it wouldnt match with the real night-scenes from before ...

SO they didnt even bother, but added a dead persons "ghost" instead and ended the series on that note.

I disagree with the other reviewers, this is not the best that was ever made on the balkans and "croatian film industry" DOES live in a bubble, its a state funded money burning mess therefore even we croatians mostly ignore it and stick to foreign productions.

For 3 episodes we watch 6 soldiers wander around a wasteland behind the enemies line, everytime the villan with a few of his thugs appears in the far distance, killing friendlies, the sniper NEVER takes a shot. In between we get some lenghty random dream-sequence.

In the final episode they end up dressed in enemies camo on a big party, ALL enemy forces present. In the evening they secretly start killing off some soldiers in close-combat using knifes or barehanded unnoticed by the other celebrating soldiers, the villain itself gets his skull crushed in with a rock. Than the 6 with some random girl drive of to escape the wrath of the enemy who in the meantime noticed the murdered soldiers. A shootout occurs followed by a car chase that in one moment started of by night and in the next scene continues by daylight with some more fire exchange between the vehicles. Now one of our 6 guys gets hit by a bullet, the enemies suddenly retreat and the group drives of "home".

In the radio we hear that the croatian forces successfully engaged its biggest counter-offensive (operation storm), bare in mind, the celebrating opposing forces (with the lacking security) knew about this offensive !!!

THATS THE PLOT.

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.

I'd give it a 6, but lack of eminent Academy award nominees like Momcilo Otasevic and Slavko Sobin are unforgetable. And directors didn't even consider to cast one of croatian best actresses like Jelena Veljaca Popovic Rastavljenic or Natasa Josko Nismo Se Tako Dogovorili Jonjic.

Othervise, great show to force your 33 year old son out of the house.