4 /10

This movie had the biggest budget of any croatian movie so far, still compared to hollywood-standards this is only the budget of a B-movie, even though additionally the croatian army helped out with a lot of real hardware (tanks, helicopters, soldiers).



What makes things really worse, allegedly the movie itself is a cutdown version of the upcoming 8part TV-series and IT SHOWS, there are jumps in the movie that makes the storytelling inconsistent, postproduction seemed to have rushed through and worked very sloppy, a CG helicopter-crash that doesnt fit visually to the rest of the action-scenes, an attack by an enemys mig21 but not even the fast cut could hide the croatian insignia on it, windmills on the hills in the background that didnt exist back in the days.



If you expect a truely cinematic experience, you wont find it here, it looks like a oldschool TV series because it is one and the people who produced it have an oldschool background in doing these.



Now why do i give it 4/10 ? Because i still liked 35% of it and yes, those 35% are probably biased because i have croatian heritage, once you get over the 1/3 cringe-worthy parts especially at the begining of the movie, the 1/3 of lame action scenes that where just not in the directors repertoire and the fact that this is actually a TV-series you might find 1/3 of it still interessting if you are croatian and can relate to croatias war of independence. Suprisingly enough the parts i liked where those that consisted only of people talking, i liked the actors and dialogues between gotovina and the female reporter, zulu, nikica, domazet and roso which where the better casted actors in this movie, because of that i might have a look at the TV-series as well.



Last but not least, kudos to the director who is 87years old for trying to deliver his best.