The Wounds

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Film: B

 

 

In 1990, a set of very dark, violent gangster genre films were released that would set the tone for the decade, reviving the genre outright.  Led by Martin Scorsese’s immense Goodfellas, other films included The Coen Brother’s Miller’s Crossing, Peter Medak’s The Krays, Phil Joanau’s State Of Grace, Stephen Frears’ The Grifters and even Francis Coppola’s Godfather III.  Though most of them did not receive the huge commercial success they deserved, they did lay the groundwork for the rise of Quentin Tarantino, with Scorsese returning to the same territory in 1995 with his epic Casino, and Bryan Singer offering The Usual Suspects the same year.

 

The result would be a post-Tarantino cycle of such genre films that were usually very poor, like all the cheap Star Wars knock-offs that followed the 1977 original.  One problem is that these films always took place in either the United States or Britain, the premiere first world countries.  The Wounds (1999) offers a novel twist; it takes place in Bosnia!

 

The land about to be known for being “war torn” is an unusual twist, since this would take this kind of story out of a first world country, transplanting it into a chaotic second world situation.  Writer/director Srdjan Dragojevic (Pretty Village, Pretty Flame) has an obvious love of these films, yet understands the troubles such a transplant entails.  He decides to have fun with that snag, resulting in one of the best films of the batch.

 

The comedy in the U.S./U.K. version of the cycle is often the mindless sort where people are predictably going to die, totally missing suspense to the point of being a sad freak show.  That is why it has been impossible to duplicate Scorsese and Tarantino, as that is not the point of any of the few great films that get produced.  This has even seeped into the Action genre, helping to throw it off with odd placements of violence and pop culture infusions.

 

The twist with The Wounds is how the film reflects on the sad state of Bosnia, while being aware of the sad state of its first world equivalents, of the films it easily outperforms.  This DVD offers a great chance for this film to finally be discovered by those who appreciate such films.

 

The 1.33:1 full frame image is average, with color that is not what it could be, though that is likely a product of different labs and film stocks than we are used to seeing in mainstream Hollywood filmmaking.  The colors seem slightly duller, yet not the cool kind you tend to get out of labs in Europe, particularly England.  This is not to say the color looks monochromatic either, but the schemes are flat.  Due to no anamorphic transfer being possible, since the film is not widescreen, definition is not top-rate to begin with.  Add the color complication and certain flatness, and this is average.  However, this gives the film a grittiness that actually helps it.

 

The sound is Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has Pro Logic surrounds, yet this to is average.  Part of this comes from the location recording, which is good, but not great.  This is a dialogue-driven film, but there are also moments of both music, and sound effects that kick nicely into the surrounds.  Some ambience can also be heard there too.  This also seems to fit the goings on too, however, so the average presentation of both picture and sound match the film’s events.

 

The film stars Dusan Pekic, Milan Maric, Dragan Bjelogrlic, Branka Katic, Predrag Miki Manojilovic, Vesna Trivalic, and Andreja Jovannovic.  Cinematography by Dusan Joksimovic, Music by Aleksandar Sasa Habic, Edited by Petar Markovic, Production Design by Aleksandar Denic, Produced by Dragan Bjelogrlic, and Directed by Srdjan Dragojevic.

 

This film is supposedly based on a true story, much the ways The Krays was.  With that film, it shares an oddness in dealing with the to male criminals, though the real life Krays were brothers in Britain.  Another common denominator is that the area they reign in does not have a formal organized crime outfit, though The Krays takes place in the mid-1960s, decades before Guy Ritchie’s Snatch or even a good fifteen years before John Mackenzie’s The Long Good Friday (1979.)

 

Issues of masculinity are dealt with in an amusing manner, as we have seen in films like Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America (1984,) Goodfellas, or Robert DeNiro’s A Bronx Tale (1993.)  One major difference is that the film is not as concerned with nudity, particularly male, which is very unusual for a film of this genre.  There is an unspoken rule/self-censorship that male nudity is automatically homoerotic, especially in Gangster films, but it is this lack of pretension that allows the film to be more comic because it extends to the general attitude of the film itself.  It even seemed the leads might be more intimate than expected, but that was not the case, it just seemed that way at first when compared to other films in the field.

 

It is ironic that an average performing DVD does not impede the presentation of the film, since it is supposed to look gritty.  The film holds up well in such an active, ever-changing genre, and that even include TV’s recently suspended The Sopranos. As a matter of fact, The Wounds may just be a minor classic of the Gangster genre.

 

 

- Nicholas Sheffo