DaViD´82

Absolutely the best episode of the first two series. But, unfortunately for me, it is about the fight between Holmes and his nemesis. And I don’t like this part even in book form. I like Sherlock when he’s solving cases. And not when he marches around in a hero’s pose during duels with the origin of everything evil, Professor Moriarty (he is visually cast incredibly true to the original illustrations by Paget). The first time I saw it, I didn’t really like the light-weight mood, which was a little too much in places - it was different in past episodes. But, as I wrote, this is the best episode. If only for the obscure fight at the end. Far better than any King Kong vs. Godzilla.

This could have been an excellent episode, if it weren’t for the drawn-out passage about the robbery. It only gets interesting toward the end of it in the study. But watching the preceding almost quarter of an hour of the main duo’s escapades either in the yard or in the greenhouse is more irritating than entertaining. On the other hand, it’s nice that the creators went their own way, while still remaining faithful to the book it’s based on.

An ingeniously designed minimalist set that made full use of the advantages of a small stage and close quarters with the audience. Great actors, perfect, poignant dialogs and very topic. All this in a play that shifts seamlessly from joy with a comic tone through sobering up to almost psychological drama at the end. In other words, the same as many a relationship. A welcome surprise from South Bohemia. P.S.: Seen live; it’s true that TV doesn’t do the production justice.

Who would have ever guessed that the Russian-speaking dude from Moscow would make such a convincing Sherlock Holmes? And the same applies to Watson, too. And together they hit it off like a house on fire. Just a shame that this renowned series begins with an ordinary, while certainly good, episode. It’s as if we aren’t meant be interested so much in the case, but in those two, the case taking back seat. And that’s bad, however legendary the central duo is. It’s partially because the first half is an adaptation of the beginning of “A Study in Scarlet" while the second part is the “Speckled Band" already. In the interiors this has the perfect feeling of good old England, but the exteriors are less convincing. But trying to pass off dachas as English stately homes strikes me a little stupid. But the background music is outstanding.

Marchal once again puts his experience in the police force to use and creates a world full of assholes and even bigger assholes through one filter after another. Auteuil proves again and again why he is the best actor in continental Europe. Bruno Coulais managed to deliver a composition of a lifetime, and the screenplay is not nearly as run-of-the-mill as it may initially seem. And if you can find a more sensual femme fatale than Olivia Bonamy in France today, then I’d really like to meet her. But this all pales in comparison with one aspect. The atmosphere. It engrosses you right from the opening title sequence of the bus “hijacking". That scene is literally everything a viewer (like me) could ask from this kind of movie. And the best part? That it didn’t end there, but continued like that for the rest of the movie, even though the pace was a bit slow in places (although this time it kind of worked for me). If Marchal’s 36th Precinct revived the classic French crime movie and brought it to the threshold of the 21st century, then The Last Deadly Mission gives us hope that it wasn’t just a shot in the dark.

Perhaps even fewer good westerns have been made over the past ten years than there are directors of Leone’s caliber walking the Earth. Apart from The Proposition, nothing springs to mind in the new millennium. Until now with 3:10 to Yuma. It’s kind of sad, really, because it is nothing more than “just" a good western. Nothing more, nothing less. Which isn’t to say I didn’t thoroughly enjoy those two dusty hours. I did, even though I’m someone who could’ve done without suffering the last five minutes. I consider the musical theme you can hear in the main menu and during the finale to be the biggest positive of the movie. I listened to it like fifty times already and will listen to it many times more. It makes me want to reconsider the one missing sheriff’s star in my rating. ♫ OST score: 4/5

This time they’re not waiting for anything and open with the sudden depopulation of Moscow, the subsequent occupation, the fire and war-time atrocities, unarguably the most powerful parts of “War and Peace" as a whole. No need to elaborate on the technical quality, scenes with hordes of extras and hauntingly beautiful camera compositions, that’s all the same old stuff of the highest, thus unattainable quality. Bondarchuk excels as director and (finally, I’d like to add) even in front of the camera. The problem concerns the last half hour. Why, after seven years of monstrous work and six and a half hours of footage, why throw everything away and let it blow over without making any real impact? Paradoxically, the whole saga ends exactly how it started. With a dull scene about literally nothing. And that’s a great shame, because it spoils the impression not only of this part alone, but the tetralogy as a whole.

There are a lot of things that can be said about Bondarchuk, but no one can call him a minimalist, that’s for sure. Last time we didn’t leave the “chamber" environment of the Russian cream of the crop and this time we won’t leave the Borodino Front. The dynamics and the conception of the crowed scenes were shot on such a high level of quality that even today it shoos off western production into a dark corner of a dilapidated Russian dacha. And it’s not just because of the ten thousand extras and a fact that every rouble can be seen and heard several times over. The camerawork is spotless as usual. Its skill in painting unforgettable canvases would leave even the Dutch masters green with envy. In the second phase of the battle Bondarchuk went berserk. Even in his terms. He succumbed to megalomania never seen on a silver screen before. And shot something with such appeal that it has the “I’ll play that scene one last time and then I’ll go to bed" effect. So even if this part is the shortest of the whole tetralogy it takes in fact the longest time to watch it because of it. On the other hand there is nothing happening in this episode, because the plot doesn’t move on at all and only one character goes through any evolution.

The plot revolves this time around what goes on around Natasha. We don’t get to see the front at all. But that doesn’t mean that Bondarchuk won’t leave speechless everybody (including me) who thinks that his strength is in exteriors with thousands of extras and not in subtle interior insights into the life of the contemporary nobility. At least one level better and many more times more coherent that the first part. The special little games with the camera are still there. In fact there’s more of them (the wolf eyes!). It just needed to skip the cheap psychological monologs. Why keep on always coming in after the fact and stating the obvious?

Russian human nature in film robes. Ostentatious, affable, theatrical, loud, explosive, unpredictable and so on. I personally consider the biggest quality of the movie to be the fact that even though there are strangely approached (and boring) scenes from various banquets with the nobility and forced scene changes, I enjoyed it. I won’t deny that it’s mainly because of the breathtaking production design, the camerawork (all those views from bellow, fly-bys, POV scenes – yummy) and the omnipresent megalomania. In any case I hope that it’s just a kind of a prolog that Bondarchuk will develop into the “real" War and Peace. The second part and the Battle of the Three Emperors and the winter duel seem promising. Very promising. P.S.: I was right in the end, it really gets better with every next part, even though there are some hiccups.