This Won An Oscar ?

Rating: 5/10 (11 August 2004)

Having written a script in 1996 called SOLITUDE set in Bosnia in the early 1990s I`ve been interested in seeing how the Balkans conflict is featured in movies and I was really looking forward to seeing NO MANS LAND a multi national production that became the first movie featuring the Balkans conflict to win an Oscar . However I was very disappointed in it

The movie gets of to a fairly effective opening and features some excellent cinematography as night turns into morning . There`s also a scene early in the movie that steals directly from PLATOON with a hardened veteran going through a raw recruits kit saying " You don`t need that , dump this ..." so my hopes were built up that this was going to be a compelling piece of cinema but when the movie concentrates on the story proper of having two men ( Or three depending how you look at it ) in a trench it doesn`t really go anywhere , instead it just concentrates on insults like :
" You started this war you Serb pig "
" No you started this war you Muslim dog "
There`s little information on the history of the Bosnian civil war to be gathered from from these exchanges , there`s little drama to these exchanges and to be blunt when watching NO MANS LAND it doesn`t actually feel like you`re experiencing cinema since you could easily adapt this screenplay for the stage with very little modification .
Another thing was I couldn`t believe in the characters as anything more than litery devices , Simon Callow`s caricture as a UN Protection Force officer especially bordered on the offensive with the only performance and role that anyway resembled a real person being the late Katrin Cartlidge as Jane Livingstone , a journalist who seems to be implicitly based on The Guardian`s Maggie O`Kane
NO MANS LAND isn`t the worst movie to have used the Balkans conflict as a backdrop , that unwanted accolade must surely go to BEHIND ENEMY LINES but it`s far from being the best either , in my humble opinion PRETTY VILLAGE , PRETTY FLAME is the clear winner