"Kontroll" is a highly exciting, visually alive thriller from young Hungarian filmmaker Nimrod Antal, who takes much of his inspiration from one of Budapest's most fascinating landmarks: its subway system.
The second oldest subway in the world, the Budapest underground is a cavernous network of train tunnels and stations. And when we see it here--patrolled by the "controllers," or ticket inspectors, it's bathed in an eerie gray phosphorescence that makes it resemble some nightmarish purgatory.
Antal takes full advantage of that evocative locale by setting all of "Kontroll" down there, with the world outside and above never glimpsed except as a distant hazy light just above the topmost stairways. Through that netherworld, moving in a sauntering pack that sometimes resembles an aging street gang, are the "kontroll," a group of scruffy, macho non-uniformed eccentrics, led by the unshaven, black-jacketed malcontent, Bulcsu (Sandor Csanyi).
The kontroll, the rough equivalent of our subway cops but much lower on the social totem pole, are uncivil servants apparently despised by the straight citizenry and especially by their prey--cheaters who have hopped the turnstiles or entered the system without paying.
So Bulcsu's bunch are constantly faced with public contempt, erupting hostility, wild chases and even violence on their daily rounds--complicated in this movie by the insolent cheats (including one rock 'n' roll speedster with a CD headset); the callous indifference of their subway system bosses; the contempt of a rival, slicker group of inspectors; and the assaults of a mysterious serial killer who has been terrorizing the system, randomly pushing customers off the platforms into the paths of oncoming trains.
Is that killer actually Bulcsu himself? That's what his paranoid bosses suspect--partly because Bulcsu is a Brandoesque rebel, partly because he's a former intellectual and professional who abandoned a promising future aboveground for unknown reasons but also because he's a surly outsider who seemingly never leaves the subway, sleeping during breaks on abandoned benches and in the far tunnels.
But Bulcsu, with whom we come to identify, is no simple nutcase. He has a different take on the underground. For him, it's not just a workday hell, as it is for his co-worker-buddies; it's a source of magic, adventure, athletic triumph (he's a crack tunnel-racer) and possible romance--exemplified by his teasing encounters with a piquant charmer named Sofie (Eszter Balla), whom he keeps seeing.
"Kontroll" is not a realistic film, though Antal and cinematographer Gyula Pados shoot their real-life backgrounds in the Budapest underground with a gritty, rich detail that make it look both real and hallucinatory. The film is a psychological fantasy, a kind of dream-movie in which we see the world of the kontroll through Bulcsu's eyes, experiencing this lower-depths world--its horrors and possible redemption--from his vantage point.
Sandor Csanyi is a marvelously magnetic actor, and he inhabits the whole Brando-Dean-De Niro-Pacino persona with impudent skill and deep inner emotionality. The ensemble is a fine one too, salty character actors with pungent faces and lines. But the truest star of "Kontroll," of course, is the Budapest underground itself.
There have been other movies set primarily in subways: The best is the ingenious '70s U.S. thriller "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three," directed by Joseph Sargent, with Walter Matthau as a sardonic New York cop. There was also the slick French romantic thriller, Luc Besson's 1985 "Subway." Besson had a similar film notion, but "Kontroll" is a much better movie, more pictorially thrilling and suggestive. A clever genre film, a horrific thriller and a lyrical fantasy, it mixes elements from standard American urban thrillers with the feverish, dreamlike distortions of classic Eastern European art cinema.
"Kontroll," 2003's biggest movie hit and main Hungarian Oscar winner and also that country's U.S. Oscar nominee, also has won a flock of prizes, including the "Prix de la Jeunesse" (youth prize) at Cannes 2004 and the Gold Hugo (grand prize) here in Chicago.
You won't forget it soon, though it may give you at least some qualms about using the subway, especially if you're ever in Budapest. But you should try to remember at least two of its lessons. Life is a dream, even in the underworld. And never hop the turnstiles.
Directed and written by Nimrod Antal; photographed by Gyula Pados; edited by Istvan Kiraly; production designed by Balazs Hujber; music by NEO; produced by Tamas Hutlassa. A ThinkFilm Company release; opens Friday at Landmark's Century Centre Cinema. Running time: 1:46.
Bulscu ................ Sandor Csanyi
Professor ............. Zoltan Mucsi
Muki .................. Csaba Pindroch
Sofie ................. Eszter Balla
MPAA rating: R (for language, some violence and brief sexuality).