Wounds
Directed by Srdjan Dragojevic
Viewed at the San Francisco
International Film Festival

Trout and Pinkie grow up in the shadows of the crime and corruption of Serbia under sanctions. The film is mostly a flashback of the past five years and shows us Eddie the gangster, taking the boys under his wing and training them as his proteges...quite well I might add!
This film has some of the elements of Clockwork Orange... but a more current version of the "Ultra-violence", incredibly visceral, cold and heartless! There are some hilarious moments though, where the kids get Cupit's Grandma high on reefer and eventually turn her on to cocaine explaining it as an herbal decongestant... quite original!
Also the documentary TV show highlighting the top gangsters in the area, a la "Cops" which our young antiheroes finally get on, in dramatic fashion!
A pointed exploration about the glorification of violence and it's perpetrators. Filmed handheld and close, it reminded me a bit of "Man Bites Dog" a Belgian film from a few years ago, a "mockumentary" about a serial killer!
Wounds is much more gruesome in its realism... It's a powerful film about the evaporation of moral values in Serbia and the adaptive nature of disenfranchised youth!

Reviewed by Eric Michel, FilmCities

Wounds
Country: Yugoslavia Year: 1998 Running Time: 103 Min.
Cast
Predrag Miki Manojlovic, Dragan Bjelogrlic, Nikola Kojo, Branka Katic
Editor: Peter Markovic
Cinematographer: Dusan Joksimovic
Screenwriter: Dragojevic