No Man’s Land

I’m not sure how I missed this movie. I probably fell victim to the cinematic international date line that I crossed when I moved to Ireland in 2001. Movies are released on radically different schedules in different parts of the world. Hollywood films would usually take 2-3 months–with the exception of the simultaneously-globally-released block-busters–to get across the water. Films made in Europe are the reverse, opening months or even years later in North America.

Regardless, I caught a good portion of No Man’s Land on one of our crappy movie channels this evening. It looked like a fantastic film. It seemed to be a gritty examination of the war in Bosnia and an indictment of war reporting. Roger Ebert puts it well when he says ‘No Man’s Land has been compared to Catch-22, MASH and Waiting for Godot–which means, I suppose, that it contains equal parts of irony and futility.’ Among many fine performances from the Bosnian and Croatian actors, there’s Simon Callow playing a very different role from his flaming Scotman in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

The film gets an 88 from Metacritic, which is high praise indeed. That puts it at #91 on their all-time list. I don’t mean to sound like Dick Clark with all the numbers, but everyone seems to agree that it’s a quality picture.