MOVIE REVIEW – A hard-hitting Polish thriller and film drama has recently been added to Netflix’s lineup, offering a glimpse into the world of Polish football fans and (real…) street fighters. Furioza is a very gritty crime thriller that lacks the real depth of a psychological study of morality and brotherhood. It is still a decent film with solid performances and technical bravura.

Netflix’s new Polish film Furioza starts with imagery that is entirely at odds with the film’s overall theme. The film as a whole is littered with scenes of very graphic violence and brutality. However, the opening scene captures the peacefulness, depicting a man looking out to sea. The whole scene has a sense of calm, hinting at the impending storm that is about to hit.

Simple but powerful – an authentic Eastern European tale

Even though this film is really a very gritty crime drama, the film moves forward while maintaining the calm established in the first scene. The screenplay never strays from this path, not even in the way it mixes the grimness with this calm. Because the plot is relatively simple, and the character studies remain on the surface, the script cannot afford to stray too far from the primary story thread that the film is about. And the writers Tomasz Klimala and Cyprian T. Olencki have made sure that it stays that way.

Furioza is a story about family, brotherhood and morality. At the heart of the story is Dawid (Mateusz Banasiuk), a doctor and former football hooligan who is approached by his ex-girlfriend ‘Savage’ (Weronika Ksiakiewicz) to join his brother Kaszub’s (Wojciech Zielinski) hooligan organisation ‘Furioza’ to gather information about their involvement in the illegal drug trade. While Dawid accepts the job and participates with the “Furioza” gang in various hooligan activities, Dawid increasingly questions his own morality for betraying his brother and his associates. They agree that the police will close all the cases against his brother if Dawid brings the information.

Informers and provocateurs

Of course, even though it is an authentic Polish thriller, the story of the undercover police informer is a familiar one from other films. You only have to think of the 2006 Martin Scorsese film The mole, where a police mole also infiltrates a criminal organisation and has the same internal dilemmas. And now available on HBO Max’s streaming site is The Informer, a series we recently wrote about, which also has the same inner tension for the 3/3 agent protagonist. This one, however, is a bit different from the previous two. As I mentioned earlier, this film lacks psychological character studies, which is, unfortunately, a somewhat wasted opportunity because otherwise, we get to see interesting characters in it. Besides, although the film deals with important themes such as morality, family, the bond between brothers and sisters, camaraderie and the brotherhood and brutality between football hooligan galleys, it only touches on these themes superficially and does not go deep enough. In return, strong acting performances somewhat fill in the gap in character development and help to keep this essentially straightforward story believable.

Excellent protagonists

The three main actors, Mateusz Banasiuk, Mateusz Damiecki and Wojciech Zielinski, are fantastic in their roles. Damiecki, in particular, is a massive hit in his performance as the psychotic “Golden”: on the surface, the hot-headed, silly, honest and aggressive character, who is, in reality, intelligent and extremely dangerous, is one of the highlights of the whole film.

Weronika Ksiakiewicz as “Savage”, however, did not add much to her usual “tough female cop” character, who is dedicated to her job, but at the same time, is head over heels in love with Dawid. Her character, while sympathetic, is not given a well-developed enough arc in the story to be compelling. We have seen this character in so many American films, most often played by Angelina Jolie (whom Ksiakiewicz resembles in appearance, except for her short hair).

A bleak, typically “very hard” Eastern European visual world

Cinematographer Klaudiusz Dwulit perfectly captures the grim world of hooligans. The bleak atmosphere that grips the entire landscape is almost reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic setting, giving a sense of impending doom. The editing complements this by Milosz Janiec and Wojciech Wlodarski, which keeps the pace of the already exciting events at a constant tight pace.

Furioza is a dark, gloomy and brutal Polish film with a typically Eastern European tone, which is very familiar to us Hungarians. The themes of family, brotherhood and morality resonate strongly with the viewer, despite the somewhat simple storyline. In the light of all this, Netflix has produced, if not a classic, then a very good thriller.

-BadSector-