[ESSENTIAL KILLING screens Thursday June 30th at 7 pm and Friday July 1st at 9:55 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]
Review by Bob IGnizi
In many ways, Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski's ESSENTIAL KILLING is a straight forward action/adventure film. It concerns a soldier (Vincent Gallo) who is captured, tortured, and transported to an unnamed country for further interrogation. While in transit, an accident occurs and the soldier escapes. The rest of the movie concerns his efforts to evade his pursuers and survive in an unfamiliar land. The twist is that the protagonist we're asked to identify with is an Arab who has been fighting against (and killing) American soldiers.
There is almost no dialogue in the film, and what little there is frankly doesn't matter. Gallo doesn't utter a single word, and the only other character to get more than a few seconds of screen time is a deaf mute (Emmanuelle Seigner). No countries are specified, no characters are named. All we need to know is in the visuals that Skolimowski shows us.
Skolimoski's style very much reminds me of films from the sixties and early seventies, which is when the director got his start. One can easily imagine this film having been made back then using the Viet Nam war as a backdrop with someone like Peter Fonda or Warren Oates as an American POW escaping from the Viet Cong with very few changes.
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