Cargo

Plot synopsis:
Christopher "Chris" (Daniel Brühl) is a German backpacker travelling on foot on his own in an African country. He gets the whim of buying a certain bracelet, but the stall seller (Mawuli Semevo) doesn't want to sell it, because he's kept it for somebody else. Chris steals the bracelet, and the man runs after him to pick the bracelet again. When the home police (Prince Yawson and Jojo Robertson) arrive, the man leaves and Chris is left alone. A police officer asks for Chris' passport and he complies. When the police officer asks for his visa as well, Chris gets cocky, punches him and runs away.Chris goes to a derelict bar when he finds the crew of a cargo ship about to leave for Marseille, France. They all get a bit drunk and Chris, who is now running away from the police, goes after them. He enters the ship and hides with the cargo, a shipment of African birds about to be bootlegged into France. He hears the conversation between Brookes (Peter Mullan), the captain of the ship and the investors (Babou Cham and Ely Niang) of the ship, saying that Brookes'd better reach Marseille with the parrots alive.The atmosphere in the hold of the ship is strange: there are shadows everywhere, strange noises are heard sometimes, there are fast movements captured always on the corner of the sailor's eyes. The crewmates seem to be afraid of going down to the hold on thier own, and that's the thing which most makes Chris weary. However, the exotic birds have to be fed regularly. One of the crew soon finds Chris out, especially because of his reflection on a broken mirror in front of which the sailor was trying to shave. They take him to Brookes, who asks him what passport he's got. When they learn Brookes decides to put Chris on room 9 - something which the rest of the crew finds eerie - and make him work for them until they arrive to France on 7 days.Chris' only friend among the crew seems to be Baptist (Luis Tosar), an ex-priest who tells Chris not to ask questions and work in silence. Chris is given the worst jobs, like letrin-cleaning, and he just obeys. However, he finds it upsetting to go down to the ship cellar. It looks that there are weird shadows, the exotic birds start all twitting in the weirdest moments, and there is like strange movements in the dark. The rest of the crew seem to find it upsetting, although nobody wants to speak about it. In spite of all this, Chris has to feed the birds on his own. When cleaning one of the walls, he finds scribbled on it the name Rebecca. Baptist tells him not to ask questions once again.The crew is strange, and not completely there. One of them goes up to the watchpole and starts shouting something about the gulls. The rest of the crew chants "jump, jump" in a chorus. Brookes tells the crazy one to go down safely. However, when they are all together having lunch, the crew picks on the weak one, until Chris shouts and tells them to stop.Chris also has to shave Brookes with a penknife. Chris and Brookes have a strange conversation in which Brookes tells Chris that it was courageous to defend the weaker one, and that there is always the situation in which a single person is agains everybody else. That night, Chris has overheard somebody throwing somebody else oberboard - the crazed guy-. Brookes asks him if he has dreamt something, because he doesn't seem like having slept all right throughout the night. Chris denies any knowledge. Brookes asks him about his dreams, and Chris says that he never has dreams. When he's on his own at the captain room, Chris finds weird pencil drawings of a scary man, and then a lighter drawing of himself.Later, Chris finds two other stowaways, Subira (Nikki Amuka-Bird) and Abrahim (Kwaku Ankomah), both of African passport. He gives them some food, leaving it in a plastic bag in the shipment room.Abrahim is soon captured. Brookes makes Chris watch as Rhombus (Samuli Edelmann), Herman (Gary Lewis) and the rest throw Abrahim overboard. Brookes tells him that Chris himself was who took them to Abrahim, and says that he can't afford to have the ship moored again and a fine given to him if immigration officers find other migrants again.Subira looks for a moment to ask Chris about Abrahim. He says he doesn't know, but Subira will be lead to believe that Abrahim is dead. Chris cries on his own in room 9.A search party is organized. Brookes has become convinced that there are more stowaways, so everybody looks for them. They don't find anyone, and Chris says that he's sure there is not anybody else. He is beaten, because the crew is convinced there IS somebody else.Chris and Subira run and hide among the cargo. The crew can't find them again. The captain says aloud something in Swahili, and Subira runs away from Chris because she is lead to believe that Chris was the one who killed Abrahim.Later on, Baptist tries to stop the madness. He tries to help Chris and Subira, and although there is an odd moment in which he looks like helping Brookes and Rhombus, he tries to stop them. Baptist tries to reason with Brookes, saying it's not too late to stop everything. Brookes ties and gags Baptist and lives him on a hammock on his room. Subira will hit Baptist with a hammer believing it was Brookes. Subira kills Baptist.Brookes traps both Chris and Subira. Brookes admits that the previous time, the only person who refused to kill the stowaways was his own son, so he had to kill him. Brookes says that there is not turning back or redemption after that, so that Chris must decide who he wants to support: the crew or the illegal immigrants. Brookes forces Chris to choose to throw Subira overboard or be thrown himself.First, Chris pushes Subira overboard, but then he jumps. Brookes is shocked, as he had been considering Chris as a surrogate son, in the hope that this time, everything turns out all right and he does not defend the immigrants. Brookes gets mad and first, he throws a rubber ring, and then, he puts the Gull, one of the rescuing boats, on the sea.Subira helps Brookes to take Chris to safety. Subira herself gets on the boat and roars away from the cargo ship.

Tags: murder

Review:
I think the reason the Sundance organizers like dark depressing movies is that no one else does.
But if you're going to go the slow downer route, you'd better have A Beautiful Mind, or something like it, or you're destined for straight to DVD.
Just don't plan on enjoying some of the movies.Cargo is about a ship leaving Africa for Europe and a young man (Daniel Bruhl) who stows away.
It is clear from the get-go that this is a mysterious voyage, with exotic birds and rough-looking sailors with secrets and mysterious searches and who knows what's going on.
It all gets cleared up in the end, which proves to be anticlimactic.
In fact, by the end of the movie I hardly cared.Listening to the Q&A at Sundance I began to understand why.
This was a script that took a meandering course to completion, often pausing at many forks in the road to production.
Happy ending or sad?
Somehow, these decisions were made and as a result Cargo feels less like a director's vision than it does a project by committee.I didn't really know or care about any of the characters.
And with all the eeriness of the set-up, I was expecting something more..
Little gem of a find.
I was drawn by the box and thought it was a horror.
I did not read all about its's awards etc and thought it was an out and out horror.It is not - it is a slow burning thriller.As the film went on I started to emphasise with the main character.
What would I do in his shoes - was it right to keep your head down and say and do nothing.I thought all the characters were played well although I thought the captain played by Peter Millen, from my neighbouring town Peterhead, could have been a little more menacing and not so much brooding - it looked though he was in physical pain rather than emotional.
Good character actors with something simmering below the surface.Well worth a look..
Intense, well paced, and well directed.
Daniel Brühl stars as Chris, a plucky German traveler in Africa who stands up to pretty much everyone.
In trouble with the local law and having lost his passport, he stows away on a cargo ship headed for Spain.
Peter Mullan is brilliantly cast as the captain, Brookes, whose throaty drawl and demeanor are perfectly cast as a captain.Once Chris is exposed as a stowaway on the ship, he becomes a part of the crew, but slowly starts to realize that the law and morality have no meaning on the high seas.The film is moody, well shot, and the acting is exceptional.
While many scenes are high intensity and very suspenseful, there is no excessive gore or any "boo" horror therein.
The mood and the unanswered (and answered) questions leave the viewer questioning reality and what severe isolation must do to a crew of men such as these.Daniel Bruhl is perfectly cast as Chris; his charisma turns on and off at will, and he transforms his character from complacent to annoyed in a second.Peter Mullan accompanies Bruhl with his stolid, cryptic, and persistent mood, yet comes across as a character you have to like because he demands to be in charge.For a moody, tense thriller with an intelligent back story, see this movie..
You don't often see gems like this.
I saw it at the Raindance Film Festival.
Having no idea what it was about, I just needed to fill a gap between two films that I did want to see.
I was so gripped that I missed the following film.
Dare I say this film is faultless?
Dark, moody and understated.
There are some unusual, non standard plot twists that I like to have in a film.
This is not the usual Hollywood script and treatment and so much the better for that.
The suspense is held wonderfully well and there is no padding, and no overlong reaction shots dragging on the narrative.
And I almost forgot the Music/Sound effect work, I have never, ever heard that done so well, Oscar?
Beautifully merged to jar your senses, this is great..
Very strong film.
I just viewed it at the Sundance Film Fest.
Top-notch cast, especially Peter Mullan as the Captain.
His voice is like a limestone quarry.
Great cinematography (and in the tight quarters of a cargo ship) executed by a crew that comes from documentaries.
I say a very good first outing.Others felt it dragged at times, but I disagree.
It begins as a young man's desperate journey home to Europe and becomes a study of a depraved Captain.
The subtext is a comment on government's tendency to outsource dirty work (in this case dealing with stowaways)..
The theme seems somewhat of interest, and it could have held attention if it were not for Daniel Brühl's character, "Chris", who is annoying to an extreme.
For some reason, that the viewer is never able to understand, the incredibly innocuous Chris is able to screw up everything he touches from scene one until the grand finale.
Anyone with even half a brain, finding himself in such a perilous state, would lay the lowest profile possible in an attempt to merely survive - which is the exact opposite route taken by Brühl's highly infantile and ridiculous character.
After 30 minutes into the flick, you come to detest the guy's guts, wishing that the hostile crew would just fling the half-wit overboard and get it over with.Do yourself a favour - skip this flop..
Crew Cut. This is a delight.
I have seldom seen so much achieved with so little.
What a crew!
This reminds me of the Bill Hicks sketch where he recalls that Brits seldom have more than a soccer ball to threaten people with.This German kid makes the big mistake of going to Africa outside of a World Cup event.
And then the chance to get back to Europe on a cargo ship.We, who like films, are always looking for little gems that slip through the Net. They are not put together by committee.
Things don't blow up every five minutes.
The hero does not dodge all the bullets sent his way.One of the best captains I have seen..
Not entirely plain-sailing but a long way from a ship-wreck.
One of those films that has a lot of impressive things and other things that could have been done better.
One of the things that Cargo has in its favour is that it looks great, the scenery is beautiful, the ship is like a character of its own, the lighting has a haunting effect and the photography and editing have a tautness and eeriness about them.
The music also has an eerie quality while not making things too obvious, the first half of the story at least is very engaging and suspenseful as well as tightly paced, the dialogue is smart and intense at this point too and Peter Mullen and Daniel Bruhl are very well-cast, very brooding.
The second half is not quite so good, it has its intense, suspenseful moments and the film is still well made and acted sure.
But it also does come rather confused and even for a thriller things felt under-explained, granted thrillers can leave things open for interpretations and leave a lot of questions but for some reason Cargo didn't feel very complete at the end of the day.
The dialogue becomes stilted by this point, the pacing loses its tightness and becomes plodding and Cargo does end on a banal note.
The characters are relatively interesting in the first half and mostly for the second half but the viewer's frustration at Chris' actions increase more and more until reaching boiling point towards the end.
Overall, a well-made film with some impressive things but a lot of the second half leaves one short-changed.
Not plain-sailing but not a ship-wreck.
Sometimes, people take a detour on their lives and end up going somewhere they would never want to be.
That's what happened to a young boy named Chris who traveled on work to an African country and decided to stay (or so he says) to know more about it.
Romantic fantasies subside when the truth about corruption and violence in African nations puts Chris in a dire situation...
so he decides to stowaway on a boat for Marseille, a boat with a special treatment reserved for stowaways.
Having slept harmless in the cargo hold for one night, before being found, everybody else on the ship thinks he knows what lies hidden in the hold, that makes strange noises and frightens the crew-members, making them disappear one by one.
The problem is: the crew knows more about it than Chris, and a sense of mistrust is visible from day one.
Told to stay in his room, close his eyes, sleep, and ignore the strange noises at night, he decides to find out what secret hides behind a name written in the WC walls: "Rebecca".
And he now knows he SHOULD NOT be alive, and survivor's guilt sets in...
"Cargo" is a metaphor about live.
About the way we have to live with our egocentric decisions, about the ghosts we carry and the mistakes we made in the past, and the way we deal with strangers and try to find a meaning to our lives in the experience with significant others.
And, as "The Baptist" (the cook) says in the last minutes of the movie to Capt.
So the Captain kills him.
A very claustrophobic ambiance carries very far the sense of strangeness between the crew-members and the stowaway, and the story is told more with silence and secrets than with acts or dialog (except for the story about "Rebecca" and all the killings after that).
You can almost feel the urge to demand that the crew accepts and treats fairly the poor Chris, but they are on opposite extremes of the Humankind.
In the end, Chris's sacrifice redeems the entire crew that abandons the ship "Gull" for a new life on the ground, but his body will lie there, in the cargo hold, in the arms of Capt.
Brookes, determined to go down with the ship to atone for his sins.
Though simple, it is a nice movie to see in late night sessions.
P.S.: there are no ghosts or sea monsters on this ship, but the ones we carry inside our own hearts..
Unresolved Questions but Perhaps Worth a View.
An interesting collaborative production out of Spain, staring a leading German actor, and shot in English, "Cargo" starts, continues, and finishes with a permeating sense of dread and discomfort.
Imagine the scene in "Das Boot" in which the ruddy engineer loses it, and extend that to a full-length film (adding some mysterious sounds and disappearances of characters) and you get the general feeling.
For all its beautiful, gritty imagery, the story leaves some significant questions unanswered.
That's not necessarily bad in a film.
For example, a question like "Does the captain's ominous drawing of the beautiful parrot turned demon actually mean something literal, or metaphoric?" leaves you with something to think about and discuss.
But, other questions (Why and how are the sailors disappearing?
Are they being killed or jumping ship from guilt?
How exactly does the boy drown when the other thrown-over passenger seems to come out just fine?) leave you wondering if the script was badly cut, the film badly edited, or were bad direction or budgetary restrictions to blame.
While glad to have seen it, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to a friend, unless they are a thriller or mystery fanatic..
Great set-up, lousy conclusion.
They should have made a horror film out of it..
The movie starts off establishing Chris as an unsympathetic, dubious character.
He steals a bracelet after a man refuses to sell it to him; not only that, Chris treats the vendor with obvious contempt, without any reason.
A little later, he has an altercation with the local police, in which he frees himself by head-butting one.
Now, regular German students (or young people) visiting any country for tourist reason do NOT even know where to begin with executing a head-butt, let alone perform one on a cop.
Hence, we have to assume that Chris is an unsavory character at best.And yet, as events unfold on the ship, Chris turns out to be a person of principle, ready to risk his own neck to save a couple of stowaways that he barely even knows.
Or are we merely looking at another badly written movie character?
I tend toward the latter.Whether Chris is badly written or badly understood hence played by the German actor Bruhl, there is definitely something "off" about his behaviour throughout the movie.
There is no indication early on that Chris is a moron, and yet he behaves like one on several occasions once he has been discovered on the ship: 1) he practically laughs at the blond guy whom he caught masturbating, 2) he is rude without a reason toward Mullen while shaving him, 3) he is told to remain locked in his room, yet he goes to the deck to spy on the crew, 4) he goes through Mullen's drawers, taking risks that are far too unnecessary, especially for someone in his shoes.
His behaviour on the ship is that of a misbehaving, overly curious child, i.e. not of an illegal passenger who is supposed to keep a low profile in a place that is very obviously run by criminals.The other somewhat problematic character is the one played by Mullen.
Here is a man who kills his best friend on the ship by repeatedly smashing his head in, who has African stowaways thrown overboard to their deaths without so much as flinching, and who had already killed even his own son by breaking his neck!
And yet the captain is plagued by remorse that seems to be far too strong for a person of that kind of extremely low moral fiber.Mullen's treatment of Chris is bafflingly permissive and soft, which we much later find out was the result of Chris resembling his dead son.
That, of course, explains why Mullen looked at him so intensely in the bar when they were all still on land.
Chris is not only an illegal passenger, but his behaviour is provocative, to say the least.
In the end, as Chris drowns, Mullen is overcome with guilt, as if witnessing a renewed murder of his dead son.
He breaks down completely, starts sobbing and even orders the entire crew to leave the ship!
Somehow none of this feels very realistic.
Someone who exhibits psychopathic violent tendencies is almost always devoid of empathy, let alone guilt or love for anyone, even for a family member.
Mullen plays a person that cannot exist in the real world."Cargo" is an interesting, moody film that promises a lot but ultimately disappoints with its mostly banal conclusion.
There are hints of ghosts, of supernatural forces plaguing the ship (the strange sounds, coupled with the birds' behaviour), but in the end it's all just a puff of smoke.
Little is explained.
We never find out who made those noises, nor do we understand why the crew are disappearing.
Are they being killed by ghosts or - as one person here wrote - killed themselves due to guilt by jumping overboard.
Were they killed by the illegal passengers?
Not too likely; they are not presented as that dangerous.Chris's death is a little weird, too.
He jumps into the ocean to rescue Subira, but she refuses to connect hands!
I tell ya, when you're drowning, your very strong instinctive reaction is to grab the hand of WHOMEVER is offering it to you, and may it even be Hitler's or Stalin's.
A very unconvincing scene.
As a result, Chris drowns - while Subira saves herself!
"Cargo" had potential, but somewhere along the line there must have been too much last-minute tempering with the script.
I have no other explanation...So what is the movie about?
In the words of the famous 20th-century poet The Notorious B.I.G.: "My cargo, escargot...".
Sorry, no idea what this means, but neither had the murdered fatso..
Well-paced and oppressing thriller.
Even though I really enjoyed "Cargo", I would like to share a goof I just discovered: After Chris is hit over the head, a crew member examines and cleans the wounds on his forehead.
In the next scene, however, which shows Chris sitting on his berth, the old blood stain has miraculously made its way back to right below Chris' hairline.
The setting on an old rotting freighter keeping a dark secret in its bowels surely contributes to the film's overall spooky atmosphere.
All the acting is credible, and character development is subtle and thoughtful, although the portrayal of crazy old Herman seems a little cliché-ridden and overdone.
Even if it may not quite play in the league of Hitchcock and the likes, "Cargo" is miles above cheap, brainless and inconclusive torture flicks in the fashion of "Hostel.".
Reality of immigration.
It's not a bad film.
What I liked most about it is that I was expecting a kind of Alien on the sea funfair, but then it turned out to be quite interesting.The main plot is about how the crew of a cargo freighter decides to throw overboard every single illegal immigrant they find because of the high fines they would be charged otherwise.
This may be based on reality, because some years ago, there were political talks in Spain concerning lorry drivers travelling from countries like Morocco to Europe: the drivers would be fined heavily if any immigrant would try to pass through the border hidden in their vehicles.
The idea was scrapped for good (thank god), but this film just explores that concept.
What would happen if somebody simply decided that there is no way they were going to pay such a fine?