Non-Hollywood War movie, so no unreal hero's, no unreal action scene in which only the bad guys get hit!

Rating: 8/10 (31 May 2004)

I was very curious about this movie, for i'd heard both good and bad comment on it before i finally decided to rent it. And i was surprised by the way the makers of the movie showed their horror of a completely useless war (i know, aren't they all useless?).
They make their point by showing a almost absurd coincidence, in which the characters end up and how the different characters react on this strange situation. The sour part of the whole thing is the fact that this could have happened for real... For me, that's what makes this movie so good. For any of you have followed the news around the Yugoslavian war in the early nineties a little bit, you must recognize what i mean: The scene in which the Bosnian and the Serbian soldier are in the trench arguing about who started the war and when they cannot agree, the Bosnian guy has a gun in his hands and asked the other guy "who started the war?!" so the Serbian guy has to say "we did", because he would get shot if he sticks to his own opinion. And then further on in the movie the two of them get in a situation in which the Serbian soldier has a gun and he asks the Bosnian who started the war; now he has to say they started it, because he has a gun pointed at him! The whole movie is about how stupid the whole situation is when you start thinking about the real reasons of a war. Also the position of the UNPROFOR soldiers was a very clear statement! In this movie it were the French, but it could also have been the Dutch, or the Germans, or any other country in this 'peace-keeping humanity-mission'. They are there, they could make a difference, but they aren't allowed to do anything by their superiors! The media and a disobeing sergeant are needed to bring attention to the scene in the trench, but when things get a little rough, the superior almost literally says:'they (the Serbs and the Bosnians) are all crazy, they will never agree, so why should we bother....'
When you are going for a fast movie, or war action, don't buy or rent it, but when you are looking for how a couple of individuals can behave in an unpredictable, almost unreal situation, it's a must!!! For me this movie was one which shows the absurd way of making war in these modern times, and the way we, 'civilised' Western people think we can solve them with UN-missions or whatever, without taking the risk of actually getting hurt ourselves... At the end everybody is only trying to save his own ass, just like in real life, so only the one who depends on the help of others is left alone, gets killed or runs away saying he has tried...