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DVD HDSP: Hunting Down Small Predators
 Run time: 100 min Rating: 7.3 Genres: Drama | Romance | Thriller Director: Cvetodar Markov Writers: Hristian Nochev Stars: Vladimir Georgiev, Boyko Krastanov, Stefan Mavrodiyev |
| Storyline A young man has trouble communicating with people and is seeing a shrink. He falls in love at first sight, then meets three friends and joins their small community. The four youngsters naively decide to make some easy money by blackmailing an elderly woman. Little do they know that a stranger with a shady past and problematic present will turn their lives upside down. A story about love and despair, hope and disillusionment, revenge and revelation. Written by Anonymous |
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| Details: Country: Bulgaria Release Date: 17 September 2010 (Bulgaria) |
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2 comments
Quite an interesting phenomenon in Bulgarian cinema by itself, the film is in no way pretentious or hard to follow. It offers the viewer a look into the world of a couple boys and girls nearly out of their teen years, bearing the thought that they have their whole lives in front of them. At the mean time it also tells of a (possibly) former criminal who, in his turn, does not seem to have a real reason to live anymore. All he sees and finds is only trouble.
The pace of the film changes on a couple of times and finally comes to a pretty unexpected end. It has a couple of other twists which are quite different from most Bulgarian films. Not only that, but Hunting Down Small Predators manages in some way to avoid the topics that have haunted the country's scene for the past 15 years now. And for topics it simply cannot omit, it has in store a nice perspective. I was really impressed by the scene where the old mobster got out of the car, went to a Roma boy and paid him 10 levs or so for his glue pouch. It looked so real. Only later did I understood that it was actually Hristo Shopov's own idea to do that and was not a part of the script. He said he just felt it was right to do it. And it felt right in the flow of the movie.
The film has nothing superfluous about it and is hardly a contender for any award or something, but it is different and really enjoyable. As a Bulgarian I loved it and liked it even more because of its distinctive spirit.
I was pleasantly surprised to see some good acting in a very long time, in modern Bulgarian cinema. I saw a Bulgarian movie which uses slang words, but they sound good- in other modern movies the speech of the actors is pretty annoying. the movie was interesting, the script had a good idea. I like movies which jump time and events, so that in the end the viewer comes to see that all the characters are involved together in a bigger picture. I liked the way the title was carefully chosen to go with the plot and how it developed by the end of the movie.
what I didn't like was the slow movement of the events, the long introduction of the characters and the repetition of some scenes- they could have been shown as a different point of view, but not the exact same scene shown twice. I also didn't like that almost the whole soundtrack was made by one single band, which is not by the taste of many people. to be honest, Ostava has poor songs, poor lyrics and the voice of the leading singer is a pale copy of Placebo's vocalist. also, this is yet another Bulgarian movie which tries to copy the works of Tarantino- yes, he is a big influence, but personal style is what makes the true artist and I judge about that not only by some of the scenes, but also because of some of the original music scores.
other than that, the movie pretty well captures the times we're currently living in. I rate it 5/10 because it was mediocre in most ways, though better than many other Bulgarian movies out now, which I'd rate 2 or 3/10- the movie directors, actors, screen writers in Bulgaria have a lot more to learn until they reach the place in time when they can ask for a bigger audience and higher budget- they have to find themselves first.