Movie No. 15 (2018): SPOOR
Spoor (aka Pokot) (2017)
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Cast" Agnieska Mandat-Grabka, Wiktor Wborowski, Jakub Gierszal
In Polish, with English subtitles
The movie examines sense of community, activism, greed, and vengeance in a remote Polish village near the Czech border. The main protagonist is Janina, a retired engineer who now moonlights as English tutor in an elementary school, while living alone with her dogs that she calls her daughters. She is vegetarian. She believes in astrology more than the Darwinian theory. Her routine existence gets stirred when her dogs disappear, and later finds her neighbor dead. Then one by one, dead bodies of local thugs and powers that be - all hunters- are discovered. This poses threat to the community's peace and order. Janina, fueled by her activism, cannot take the series of events sitting down.
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Cast" Agnieska Mandat-Grabka, Wiktor Wborowski, Jakub Gierszal
In Polish, with English subtitles
The movie examines sense of community, activism, greed, and vengeance in a remote Polish village near the Czech border. The main protagonist is Janina, a retired engineer who now moonlights as English tutor in an elementary school, while living alone with her dogs that she calls her daughters. She is vegetarian. She believes in astrology more than the Darwinian theory. Her routine existence gets stirred when her dogs disappear, and later finds her neighbor dead. Then one by one, dead bodies of local thugs and powers that be - all hunters- are discovered. This poses threat to the community's peace and order. Janina, fueled by her activism, cannot take the series of events sitting down.
While I like the movie in general, I'm not sure if it really delivers as a standout crime movie. The animal rights activism angle sometimes skews the narrative away from the crime genre. The movie injects humor in some scenes, while unnecessarily melodramatic in some. Impressive cinematography effectively captures isolation.
Rating: 3.5/4.0
Date seen: March 3, 2018
Comments