Film Reviews

Essential Killing

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Vincent Gallo
• Details: Poland/Norway/Hungary/Ireland / 83mins (15A).

An arthouse movie that is The Fugitive meets Rambo? Say it ain't so. This punitive plot - how much can one person endure? - is oddly played out minus any kind of dialogue whatsoever but where Essential Killing hopes that this will be into an insight into survival, and what we're prepared to do to insure it, falls a little short.
Gallo plays Mohammed, a Taliban fighter who is captured by US troops in Afghanistan after sending three soldiers to the great beyond by means of a rocket launcher. While being transported to a black site in Eastern Europe to be interrogated, the convoy carrying Mohammed slips off a steep hill allowing the scared soldier time to escape. Escape he does but now he's captive to Mother Nature: alone, tired, freezing, injured and with no idea where he is, Mohammed is forced to live off the wintry land...
Written and directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, who returned to directing in 2008 after a 17-year hiatus, Essential Killing keeps the audience in the dark about almost everything. The press notes state that Gallo's character is called Mohammed, but his name is never mentioned, nor is it clear if he's captured in Afghanistan, and the setting of 'Eastern Europe' is a best guess listening to the accents. Mohammed's dreams of a beautiful woman and child could be his wife and child back home, or what he hopes is waiting for him in the next life. We just don't know. What is in no doubt is Mohammed is prepared to do anything to live, with title taken from the kills Mohammed is forced to commit to: they are either for escape, for food, and in 'it's-either-you-or-me' situations.
Gallo is pushed to extremes: even if emotionally all he's called upon is to look scared and tired (and behind that bushy beard it's sometimes hard to make out which, but presuming it's both would be the way to go), Skolimowski asks him to eat ants, tree bark and raw fish for his craft. Skolimowski goes too far, however, when the increasingly desperate Mohammed accosts a large woman in the road and forces her to breastfeed him. Rather than looking like desperation, it just looks silly.
Light on story it may be, Gallo's determined performance and the stunning visuals save Essential Killing from being what it could have easily have been: The Fugitive meets Rambo. Although, that could be rather nifty.

Review by Gavin Burke