Klopka is a suffocating film, so dense in moral righteousness, it defies criticism. It is a lot like the post-Milosevic Serbia (morose, self-pitying and self-important) but not for the reasons its makers would like us to think. The story is presented as a mirror to modern Serbia, but it is very unoriginal, sharing a similar structure with numerous European films: A decent, if somewhat hapless, man agrees to kill a stranger to earn the money that will pay for the operation to save his only child's life. To say anything else would be to spoil the movie, although the plot moves along with unnecessary predictability and contrivance. The actors are highly competent, but they are not given much room to inject any ambiguity into their characters. Only Miki Manojlovic's performance lifts the film from its manufactured faux-noir ordinariness. As the vacuous, soulless Milos, he is the only character that can be considered unique to modern Serbia.
Srdan Golubovic is a promising director. Nearly each shot in the film can be blown up as a still photograph and displayed in an exhibition. He is in control perhaps excessively so Ultimately, the film collapses under its own relentless depression. We are not free to question as to how a professional couple leading modest and frugal lives without any debt burden cannot raise 26,000 Euros. Certainly, it is not because they splash on fashion. (Nebosja Glogovac as Mladen wears a couple of tattered gray tops throughout the film. Much is made of his 30-year old Renault.) If you don't know any better, you'd come out of cinema thinking that this could happen only in Serbia and society is to blame. The truth is that Serbia's poor is much better off than those of the United States. At least there is a public health system in Serbia that works mostly It is a pity. Because one scene in the film is so fraught with genuine suspense, it leaves the viewer wondering what a better film Klopka would have been if the filmmakers left some of their melancholy at home before coming to the set.
Srdan Golubovic is a promising director. Nearly each shot in the film can be blown up as a still photograph and displayed in an exhibition. He is in control perhaps excessively so Ultimately, the film collapses under its own relentless depression. We are not free to question as to how a professional couple leading modest and frugal lives without any debt burden cannot raise 26,000 Euros. Certainly, it is not because they splash on fashion. (Nebosja Glogovac as Mladen wears a couple of tattered gray tops throughout the film. Much is made of his 30-year old Renault.) If you don't know any better, you'd come out of cinema thinking that this could happen only in Serbia and society is to blame. The truth is that Serbia's poor is much better off than those of the United States. At least there is a public health system in Serbia that works mostly It is a pity. Because one scene in the film is so fraught with genuine suspense, it leaves the viewer wondering what a better film Klopka would have been if the filmmakers left some of their melancholy at home before coming to the set.