A friend lent me the disc and told me i had to watch this film. The question I am left with is "why?". Wikipedia describes the film as a satirical comedy. Well, that's one way of looking at it. Set in October 1993 the narrative inter-twines a number of stories - England are playing Holland in a qualifier, the Balkan War is in full swing, refugees are flooding to the UK and racism is out of control on the streets of London.
Perhaps the chaotic way in which the stories unfold through jump-cut editing is a device intended to reflect the chaos of war and its aftermath. It makes for rather disjointed viewing and narrative arcs that make tangential turns only to resolve themselves in a happy ending depicting people who at first seem far from beautiful. I can't remember seeing a film quite like it.
The film has some extremely unlikely plot turns but the fact that most of the characters provoked a strong reaction from me shows that something must have been working. Few of the characters are likable - perhaps that's necessary for them all to be transformed into beautiful people. All-in-all the whole thing is just overdone and lacking finesse.
There are some who have the seen this film and think it's very clever and done well. It is interesting that on Rotten Tomatoes that there aren't many viewer reviews and only a few critic reviews. The top critics on the site all rate it positively whereas IMDb is less enthusiastic giving it 6.7/10. All of this simply demonstrates it's a film you either get or it gets you! I'll give it 6/10.
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