Movie Review - "In The Land of Blood and Honey" 12/23/2011

Movie review for "In The Land of Blood and Honey", viewed 5/26/2014.

Trailer:

Criteria:

0/5 – No value whatsoever. Absolute waste of time.

1/5 – Barely worth any time.

2/5 – Pathetic but has a bit of something to hold the attention a little.

3/5 – Somewhat kept the attention but could definitely have used more.

4/5 – Good, but not awe-strikingly amazing. Could have maybe used a bit more to the movie.

5/5 – Go see it! Wonderful movie all around – characters, music, theme, storyline, etc.

I watched this movie on Memorial Day morning, finished around eleven or so A.M.  It was very difficult to watch, much less get the guts to review it.

"In the Land of Blood and Honey", released December 23, 2011, is about the Bosnia-Herzegovina war in the early/mid nineties.  The main male character (Danijel was a Serbian soldier, son of one of the Serbian generals and is also a higher-up leader.  The main female character is a Muslim woman (Ajla) who is captured during the Serbian war.  Danijel and Ajla had met at a club before the war started and had a wonderful time dancing, but once the war broke out, it was "them versus us" kinda thing.  She a Muslim and he a Serb?  Not a good combination in the war between Muslims and Serbs.  Trust, love, fighting for what is right, etc. is what is brought up in the movie.

Context:

Rated R for the violence of war: soldiers raping captured Muslim women, soldiers beating the captured Muslim women, soldiers killing Muslim men (near their homes, lined up in front of a ditch with a bulldozer to bury them, etc.), soldiers demolishing cities, soldiers killing a toddler due to the child not shutting up [not seen but talked about over the toddler's dead body], etc.

There is also consentual nude sex scenes but it wasn't sensual to the viewer.  Made the viewer wonder if the Muslim woman actually was doing it to survive the Serbs.

Character Building:

During the whole movie, there was the relationship between Danijel the Serb and Ajla the Muslim.  At first, Ajla didn't trust him but then he stood up for her against the other soldiers.  We are given a sense of "I love her" exuding from him but, when another soldier rapes her (while Danijel is out) following Danijel's father's order, Danijel kills the soldier but does not do anything against his father.  His father says that Ajla will betray him but the mutual respect between Danijel and Ajal seems to be strong.  Danijel goes back to Ajla and ties her up, with a gun in his hand.  He asks if he did the wrong thing by trusting her but she says no.  They have make-up sex and seem to be alright.  He even trusts her to know where he will be after the raid on some NATO troops and Muslim civilians but as he is walking out of the church, the church explodes behind him.  He looks up from the ground in front of the church to see Ajla's sister standing nearby.  Automatically, he assumes that Ajla told her sister about the church so he confronts her.  One would think that the two of them would be able to hash it out and make everything alright between them but that lingering doubt instilled in Danijel by his father, and the brainwashing of the Serbian forces, makes Danijel act contrary to his "I love her" feeling.  [SPOILERS: He shoots her dead.]  I was surprised that he didn't cry and shoot out his own brains after murdering her, but I guess his character changed from a caring man to a cold man of war.

The other characters also seem to get a bit of a character change due to the war.  Some of them became bitter or just struck with grief.  Others were doing all they could to survive the atrocity of war.  I'm just glad that, though Danijel did not kill himself after her death, he did give himself up and admitted that he was a "Criminal of War".  We don't get to hear what happens to him afterwards but that's how it goes.

This was a very depressing movie because it makes one realize that life is not all "fun and games" and that there are wars out there.  It might not be nuclear meltdown war, but it is still war.  People do not stay the same when there is a matter of life and death on the line.  People do not stay the same when it is a "me or them" situation.

But why must soldiers go to the extreme of raping, outright murdering, and whatnot during war?!  Or even not during war, why must we be so destructive?

My thought, from "The Fifth Element" (1997), that deals with this idea of war:

"In the Land of Blood and Honey", however, did not have the whole "Love Conquers All" idea.  It was more of a "Here's life in the war time. Take it or fuck off" kind of idea.

The trailer is HORRIBLE for this movie.  Idealize the romance/love aspect for the trailer and barely touch on it in the movie?  Bad judgement for creating the trailer!

This is on streaming through Netflix, if you want to watch this.  I watched the full English movie because I did not know the difference but there is a "native language" version of it in the Theatrical Version on Netflix if you are interested [I found that out after I had watched the film].

Rating:

4/5 – Good, but not awe-strikingly amazing. Could have maybe used a bit more to the movie.

Recommended but I will not watch this again.  It is too heavy for me.  Much better showing of war than movies like "Pearl Harbor" (2001) because the love was not idealized and the war was raw/unadulterated.