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- guardian.co.uk, Saturday May 15 2004 12.26 BST
If ever there was film-making with a hairy chest, it's the kind practised by Emir Kusturica, that most virile of directors. Swirling, sprawling, brawling and caterwauling - these are just some of the words that come to mind for this movie, set in Bosnia during the 1990s war.
Kusturica keeps the action in perpetual, cacophonous uproar. Just as in Underground or Black Cat White Cat or, well, really any of his films, he has his Gypsy band honking and parping away pretty much 100% of the time; he has geese and dogs and donkeys and cats scurrying about and performing impeccably for the camera and everyone is shouting at each other just so they can be heard above the din. Kusturica can't see a hillside without wanting someone to roll down it.
Technically and logistically, the management of each chaotically energetic scene is unquestionably a marvel. But the unrelenting, browbeating energy never allows room for the story to breathe. It's like turning up late to a party to find everyone is just too drunk to offer you a glass.
Then there is the curious effect of positioning the story in the middle of one of modern history's great humanitarian tragedies. This is intended to be a Romeo-and-Juliet tale of a Serbian railway engineer whose son is taken prisoner by the Bosnian Muslims, and who falls in love with the Muslim woman his side are keeping for a possible prisoner exchange to get him back.
As it happens, this Muslim is a blonde babe who has plenty of semi-nude love scenes. For those who remember the Bosnian war in terms of ethnic cleansing and mass graves, this might look like naivety - but as far as Kusturica is concerned, naivety is the prerogative of the international media in the form of a clueless American TV reporter. Kusturica's monomaniacal dedication to creating the same spectacle for film after film is beginning to tire.
