Those filthy people in Serbia!!!

LIFE AND DEATH OF A PORNO GANG (2010)

D. MLADEN DJORDJEVIC
SYNAPSE FILMS
DV

LIFE AND DEATH OF A PORNO GANG is undoubtedly going to be one of those films that gets knocked around as a challenge for viewers. A movie so extreme that it practically is spitting in your face to watch it. Or so the hyperbole will go, invariably comparing it to the “other” Serbian made horror/porno/snuff movie that made everyone loose their lunches. But the big difference here is that PORNO GANG is actually a very thoughtful, albeit downbeat, film that trades on a lot of interesting characters. It is violent and gory, and extremely sexually explicit, but it is the fact that the movie bearing those traits is so damn well done that makes it memorable. 

The movie opens with film student Mark (Mihajlo Jovanovic) realizing that he is not exactly going to have his dream of making thoughtful art films, or horror movies with political overtones. He quickly is sucked into the world of porno and before he knows it a year has passed, he is now jaded beyond belief and owes money to the mafia. He blew their money trying to make a politically charged horror/porno hybrid. To get out of town he bands together a group of misfits to make a traveling porno carnival and heads into the mountains and back roads of Serbia. A few shows go ok, but they are not making money. Soon he is approached by a secretive old man who wants the gang to start shooting snuff movies. Only with people who want to die and have some money to give. The gang is reluctant at first but after a nasty gang rape, they find themselves motivated enough to kill. 

PORNO GANG takes a long hard look at how things like lack of opportunity, war, and poverty can mold one’s vision of life. The particular detail that makes the movie work is that the people they are killing are willing to go. Making the gang executioners, Dr. Kevorkians in outrageous outfits. The film is careful to outline these scenes to make both the “victims” and the “killers” sympathetic. For example there is a scene where a Soldier is brought out for them to kill and he confesses his horrific war crimes on camera. The horrors of war are what specially drove this man to end up here. But interestingly enough after they kill him they end up on a slippery slope themselves ultimately succumbing to the same depressive evil. The movie makes a strong connection between being a Soldier who carries out war crimes to the band of outcasts carrying out snuff murders. Both degrade your humanity and shatter your soul.

There is another interesting scene where they are asked to kill an old farmer. When they arrive he tells his story so we find out his grand daughter has radiation poisoning, as does his livestock from the  bombings. He wants to die on camera to get enough money to save his family. Once again war and politics have driven the characters to the ultimate degradation.

PORNO GANG treats the violence and loss of life with a straight face. The most memorable scenes are the quietest, such as after the young, cute, chubby girl has killed the soldier she disappears. They find her standing alone in the forest in the rain just trying to rid herself of what she has done. The act of killing has weight in this film. 

So LIFE AND DEATH OF A PORNO GANG is always interesting, shocking and deeply heartfelt. Approach with caution, but for those who can stomach it, this is a fine film.

The Blu-Ray release that I reviewed here comes with a goofy behind the scenes featurette, some largely unneeded deleted scenes, trailer and the most interesting a feature length documentary on the Serbian Porno world called MADE IN SERBIA. This documentary is structurally somewhat similar to PORNO GANG as it follows a filmmaker who once dated a porno star as he travels through the underbelly of the Serbian Porno world half-assedly looking for her. That is the bare thread of plot that movie has laid on it, what it really does is interview all kinds of people from that world from shop owners to film producers, all of whom think Serbian Porno is crap. 

Interesting side not for me personally: On this blog is a review for what I called THE WORST PORNO EVER MADE. I had no idea what it was when I watched it, or where it came from (you can read the review HERE) and had thankfully forgotten it. Well low and behold during MADE IN SERBIA we meet a porn director and his wife who stars in his films. And sure as shit as we go behind the scenes of one of the shoots I don’t recognize her and the outdoor location they are shooting in! Turns out that terrible porno I saw a couple years back was a classic piece of Serbian erotica! Yikes!

MADE IN SERBIA is overlong at 101 minutes but it is still pretty fascinating stuff. Getting to look at how smut is looked at and made in such a remote place is interesting, though at the end of the day everyone’s reasons for doing it all end up being the same.

The DVD version does NOT have MADE IN SERBIA on it as an extra. 

Review © Andrew Copp

The Life and Death of a Porno Gang - Red Band... by ohmygore

BLEEDER, Nicholas Winding Refn's 2nd feature film

BLEEDER (1999)
D. Nicholas Winding Refn
Import DVD
1.85

After I saw the movie DRIVE this year I became a little obsessed with seeing other films from director Nicholas Winding Refn. I had previously seen BRONSON (2010) which I was very impressed with, and had caught up with his Viking epic VALHALLA RISING (2011) just before seeing DRIVE. But I had not seen any of his older films from when he was primarily still working overseas. So I took a plunge and placed a large order from Amazon UK (grabbed some other dvd's I had been looking for too) and picked up this one and his PUSHER trilogy. This was the first of that bundle I watched and I was suitably impressed.

BLEEDER is a street level drama about a group of friends and how their lives change when the core couple of the group become pregnant. Leo (Kim Bodnia) and Lea (Live Corfixen) have discovered they are going to have a baby, but Leo really lacks the maturity to handle the situation. He hangs out with his video store owning buddies Lenny (Mads Mikkelson who went on to play the villain in CASINO ROYAL) and Kitjo (Zlatko Burik) watching movies all night long, or trailing behind Lea's fairly dangerous brother, low level gangster Louis (Levino Jensen). Louis is not crazy about Leo anyway and he can sense that he is unhappy about the new situation. But as things progress, Leo begins to slip into a sort of psychosis, growing more and more reckless and dangerous, making bad decisions as if to purposefully cause problems for himself until it hits the middle of the film and a huge problem that will impact them all.

The second tier of the story is less tense, and what I suspect is more personal to the director. Lenny, who is obsessed with movies and practically lives at his job at the video story has fallen for the pretty girl who works at the greasy spoon diner around the corner. The problem is that he has no personal communication skills at all. All he can do is talk movies. His friends are used to him, but in the real world his is awkward, even backward to the point that he might even be suffering from Aspergers or mild Autism. His only connection to the real world is through what he knows in the thousands and thousands of movies he watches. So he struggles to connect to this girl, who is actually not too different than he is, because she loves books in much the same way.

The first part of the story grows increasingly tense as the characters play out the situations until it reaches the last act of the film and why it is called BLEEDER. It is not what you think, I guarantee it, and it is far more disturbing that you imagine, But it is thankfully tempered by the second story of Lenny's quest to connect with this young lady.

The movie is told with a constant roving camera, almost always on a steady cam, but never obtrusive, and like his later films, using modern music as a way to punctuate the proceedings and introduce characters and give them an immediate voice. This was Refn's second feature film but his vocabulary was already in place.As his acting company, almost all who were in PUSHER and return here playing mostly very different characters than in that film.

One thing that I will say I have found a little frustrating with his films is that they tend to be a little light on the female character's motivations. He simply doesn't write the most detailed females. His male characters are always fully developed and complex, while his females are always kind of by the wayside, or just plot mechanics to move things forward. With that said, BLEEDER is the one film of the bunch I have watched of his work that suffers the LEAST in this aspect with the two female characters being pretty close to fully formed here. Much more so than the women in BRONSON and PUSHER for sure.

Right now BLEEDER is the hardest of his films to see, but it is for certain worth the effort.

Review

© Andrew Copp