Effective, if flawed, war film.

Rating: Null/10 (30 June 2002)

I checked out this movie based on its Best Foreign Film Oscar win. Having seen it I personally would have given it to Amelie, but what we have is a (relatively) hard hitting war drama set around the Bosnia-Serbia conflict.
The premise is pretty simple. A Bosnian and Serbian soldier are trapped between enemy lines, in no man's land. A third soldier, wounded, lies atop a mine unable to move for fear of triggering it. The balance of power is held by the man who has the gun  with the balance shifting intermittently as the story progresses. Thankfully this doesn't become an `Enemy Mine' scenario where the two end up hugging  instead it takes the more admirable, and less pontificating, approach of highlighting the hatreds embedded between the two sides that cannot be merely overcome by a few hours of conversation. The characters are actually quite clearly normal men  they even know people in common  but their irrational hatred of the other side is inexplicable and obviously meant to be so.
Unfortunately some of the dialog is a bit hammy. The screenplay suffers from being slightly clichéd and, while not taking the obvious route, the final resolution is still somewhat easily foreseen (although, to be fair, the inevitability is what helps make it effective). The actors help matters by imbuing their characters with emotions ranging from desperation, to hatred, all passed off without ever descending into melodrama. Director Tanovic shows an effective hand here, with camera work that never interferes with the storyline and yet brings across the quiet, and the loud, moments with enough passion to help the viewer emote with the scene.
`No Man's Land' is another, in a line of movies, that shows the horror-of-war. Thankfully it does this with the harder and more visceral of emotions rather than Hollywood sentimentality. It's let down a bit by a somewhat weak script, but the direction and acting lend enough conviction to the movie to make it worth a view. 6.8/10.