Review of In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011) by Mike C — 18 Jul 2012

I did not want to watch this. After a rough week, the last thing I needed was a 127 movie about genocide and rape. It definitely lived up to the hype on that end. Twelve minutes into the movie, I had to consider turning it off as all I could think were expletives. It eventually settles down, though you're never quite comfortable. And I thought this was a critically-acclaimed movie, so I was quite surprised to see so much hate online, a large faction of which evidently comes from dumbfuck Serbs (14,000 "1" ratings on imdb is pretty stupid for any movie).

In sixth grade (1994), we had to do these little memory things. One question was three things we wanted to see. Global peace was the most popular answer. Even then, I put my own little spin on things by saying "Bosnia blown up." This movie starts in 1992, finishing around 1995. I believe the conflict was in the news quite a bit in that time, thus my thinking that these assholes were like 90% of all war at the time.

The first scene is upsetting...a pair of people dancing to a nice song, then a bomb goes off outside. Throughout the movie, and this is why I hate these movies and war and fucks who like war, this theme is repeated: life is meaningless. If we don't agree with you, fuck you and die. Unless you're pretty, then our hypocritical little pricks will rape you endlessly. That's a fairly moot point, but seriously: you're going to commit genocide against a people because they are not worthy of living, but you're going to commit the most intimate act with the women of that group. Fuck your hypocrisy. Pathetic, pathetic.

There are more disturbing scenes. Two really struck me: the Serbs throw an infant from a balcony when it won't stop crying, and some poor schmuck getting sniped while scavenging. Again, the meaninglessness and cheapness of life: living like a scared dog, then some asshole from 300m away hits you like a coward and you never even know how you died. All that shit for nothing. Or worse yet, you lie there in the final minutes of life thinking about what a tragic joke it all is.

I always like to see resistance in movies. Flame and Citron was an Oscar nominated film a few years back, and Escape from Sobibor is a great Holocaust resistance movie. There is a cool scene in this where a dude dies after throwing an explosive device at the Serbs. The conflict is, as they say in the movie, the Serbs were just reacting to their own tragedies. It's a load of shit from either side. Just goes to show that humans are pathetic animals on the whole. But if an occupier takes all the pretty women from my town and has them holed up for sexual gratification, you can fucking bet I'm coming hard.

So, I get all worked up about what I thought was a decent movie. Way long and a bit weak at the end, but not bad from first-time director Angelina Jolie, who might have had to deal with some adversity while filming among the 19th century fucks in Eastern Europe who would support either side in genocide. But I'm not sure how factually accurate she is, so it's hard to be overly upset (though stuff like undoubtedly still goes on today...just watch The Peacekeeper and see how worthless the UN is...imagine if world powers actually tried to solve ills instead of just looking out for themselves. Crazy eh?). But overall, at least average production and story I thought. Just a pretty big bummer.