Kontroll

This film has hillarious characters but I would not classify it as a comedy. This piece kind of exists on its own plane. It has an "in your face" feel of the characters (reminicent of "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels") but they are in some fantasy underground subway world.Kontroll follows a group of ticket collectors who seems to spend no time above ground. Especially the main character, who sleeps in the terminal and doesn't look to have seen sunlight in too long a time. The whole theme of being underground is very metaphorical. Many characters are symbolic in ways too.It is quite a dreampiece, but not too fantastic. We go odd places and meet the denizens of the underground. Some people are kind, others you wouldn't want to be alone with. Especially one mysterious character who stalks the underground and shoves people down to the tracks and to their deaths.Kontroll has an interesting pace to it. It's fast, but not too fast. It moves like a subway would. Quickly, then a short stop, then moving on again.I really felt a warmth towards this film. It is oddly touching at times, hillarious at others. All the characters are well thought out and well acted. It is well balanced, complete and left me feeling positive.

"Kontroll" follows the story of a rag-tag group of controllers who's job is to stalk the vast Budapest subway system and ensure that no passengers are rideing for free. The leader of this group is Bulcsu', a man who's anxiety of compition for his contracting job has lead him underground. Where he stays 24/7, never ventureing above ground. The film does an excellent job of depicting the controllers interactions with the subway riders. The controllers meet everyone from the needle wielding madman to a girl in a teddybear costume, who Bulcsu stikes up an endearing romance. The funniest parts of the film are when the controllers encounter "Bootsey", a young punk who gets his kicks by tormenting Bulcsu's gang. This leads to some of the best "On foot" chase scenes I've seen. The main plot of the film is when the Controllers discover that a mysterious hooded figure is pushing people infront of trains. When Bulcsu is suspected of comiting these murders, he decides to go on a hunt for the hooded one to prove his innocence. or is it a hunt for self discovery? This is truely a great movie and one of my personal favorites. It has wonderful cinamatography, colorful characters and an amazing soundtrack. enjoy

My thought as I came towards the end of this, was how adroitly this combined drama and comedy.Well cast all around; the main guy knocked it out of the park, charismatic fellow.Takes every fork in the road, mostly agreeably.People are being pushed away. To their death.Instead, resort to hiding, though they say you can't but you can run.Can one come out of hiding?If you think you might hold the length against you, have an intermission. The soundtrack is above average, especially some Milesish trumpet work.

Kontroll is simply fantastic, as you can already tell from the other reviews; I'm just writing to warn that *this* DVD has absolutely no special features.The Hungarian version has two discs, anamorphic transfer (lacking in the version offered here), and plenty of special features (including deleted scenes, short behind-the-scenes feature, and two entire short films by director Nimrod Antal).Don't worry about the fact that it's the Hungarian version, the film still offers subtitles in a few languages including, naturally, English. Also, virtually all of the extras have English subtitles.I don't know why that edition is not easily available in the States, and I haven't found any good seller of the 2-disc version yet, so if you don't care about special features, the one-disc U.S. version is fine. =) Hopefully Amazon.com will pick up an Americanized 2-disc set eventually.