Essential Killing
Vincent Gallo stars as Mohammed, a Taliban insurgent who has been captured in Afghanistan, waterboarded and then placed on a rendition flight to central Europe for further interrogation. The sun-baked landscape of Asia is replaced, in a kind of surreal inversion, with sub-zero Polish forests through which sleek black armoured vehicles move swiftly towards some secret facility. But Mohammed escapes, and his condition becomes increasingly desperate as his captors pursue him through the forest. It's a manhunt thriller that exceeds the margins of realism, and shimmers with the eerie force of a nightmare or hallucination.
(...) He is on the run through the dark heart of old Europe, like a virus, or a tweak of fear or conscience; he is at large in that gnarled Europe irrelevant to the wars fought by the US in Asia and the Middle East, but where political support was offered, where "black sites" for covert interrogation are rumoured to exist, and where war, violence and cruelty are memories in the snowy landscape.
(...) Skolimowski's sheer confidence, and the expertise with which he shapes the contours of this movie, are hypnotic. (...) The film is on the verge of delirium: a gripping metaphysical drama.
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
Duration: 83 min
Dialogue: English, Polish
Subtitles: English
Age limit: K15
