Pouta

A bleak story that depicts how the repressive regime enforces its will on the Czech people and how the enforcer's psyche becomes empty and destructive.

Pouta (Binding ties) centers around a writer and a team of secret police who follow him. The chief of the secret police team is a righteous man with an empty life who has an unlimited license to inflict damage on the people he follows. He becomes obsessed with the girlfriend of his subject and starts plotting how to achieve his increasingly disturbing goals, without regard for his superiors, colleagues and collaborators.

Unfortunately the script has several holes, the characters are not fully developed and at times the movie drags. The soundtrack and sound editing are downright distracting.

But overall it is a dark view into the world under the communist regime, with its twisted logic and uncontrolled power of those in power. You can spot some dark humour. Surreal with unpredictable results. Nothing happy can come out of these circumstances. It's not a light entertainment, more of a history lesson.