Monday, 13 April 2020

ESSENTIAL KILLING no stars

Boredom personified. As an Afghan prisoner who escapes when the vehicle in which he is traveling crashes, Vincent Gallo, in a totally wordless performance, is excellent, (Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival), but Jerzy Skolimowski's picture "Essential Killing" goes nowhere very, very slowly. Skolimowski brings a documentary-like fidelity to the material that might be admirable in another context as Gallo is pursued through the inhospitable terrain by his mostly faceless and nameless enemies. It's fairly grim stuff; the 'essential killing' of the title is what Gallo is forced to do in order to survive but this isn't "The Revenant" and as man-in-the-wilderness movies go it has little to recommend it.

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