A live mine of a movie

Rating: 6/10 (18 October 2010)

This movie was up against "Amélie" in the 2002 Academy Awards and won. So I have to say this right up front: unduly. "No Man's Land" is a well-made movie about a very worthy subject. Amélie is a groundbreaking masterpiece.
Now that that's off my chest and I can sleep soundly again, to the movie itself. No Man's Land starts off with a small platoon of Bosniak replacements getting lost in no man's land, and being consequently viciously cut down by the Serb foes when the sun rises. Only two of the platoon survive badly wounded. One of them is being discovered a a Serb patrol, taken for dead, and placed on a live mine (in order to assault Bosniaks trying to salvage the body). The other Bosniak manages to take one Serb hostage. So now we have three wounded, inexperienced soldiers in the middle of mine-riddled nowhere. The movie takes on a parabolic, abstract note because the soldiers are all wounded, but are surprisingly active and talkative. The first half of the movie deals with the three inept, wounded soldiers confronting each other, without having the guts to gun each other down.
Then UNPROFOR gets wind of this conundrum and comes to the the rescue. This is when the movie takes on a satirical twist, and becomes more bearable than the realistically dire first half. But eventually there are no winners in this movie. The knights in white (the warring factions call them the smurfs due to their white uniforms and blue helmets) withdraw and leave a mess behind. We are stuck in Bosnia, a far sight away from cute Hollywood endings.
Overall a painful but memorable movie.