BIG BAD WOLVES

“Big Bad Wolves” has got a lot of press recently after Quentin Tarantino named it the best film that he had seen in 2013.  Just from this simple comment made, the awareness of “Big Bad Wolves” has risen dramatically and has given distributors the perfect quote to promote and market the film.  However in late August of last year, one week after MIFF finished, “Big Bad Wolves” was one of the titles that made up the Israeli Film Festival that screened in Australia.  Back then, not a whole lot was known about the film except that it was the new film by Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado, who previously directed the entertaining horror/comedy “Rabies”.  Due to being so burnt out from MIFF, I did not have it in me to write a review back then, but now that it has just been released in the United States, I feel it is the perfect time to revisit “Big Bad Wolves”.

After a series of brutal murders (with the victims always being young girls), the Israeli Police force believes that they have found their man, however due to the fact they have no evidence to prove their suspicions, Micki and two other cops decide to take the suspect, Dror, to an abandoned warehouse in an attempt to get a confession from the man and to tell the whereabouts of where his latest victim is.  Suffering through the beatings, Dror is adamant that they have the wrong man and that he is innocent of the crimes he is being accused of.  The beating continues until Micki’s superior gets wind of what is going on and demands that Micki let the guy go and to return to the station.  Unbeknown to Micki was the fact that an eyewitness was in the abandoned factory and recorded the police brutality which is then immediately uploaded to youtube.  Things get worse for Micki as the body of the missing girl is found, although the corpse is missing its head.  The higher ups determine that this action may have occurred in retaliation to the beating Dror coped, if he is indeed the killer.  Either way Micki is fired from his job due to his mishandling of the case.  No longer a cop, Micki decides the only way to get back on the force is to prove he is right and decides he will kidnap the suspect and torture him until he gets the confession he is after.  However, he walks right into the path of Gidi, the father of the latest victim, who has the same idea as Micki.  After a brief conversation, the two decide to team up in an attempt to crack the man they assume is the cause of their pain.

It is very easy to see why Quentin Tarantino would be attracted to “Big Bad Wolves”.  The film is ultimately a tale of revenge that is full of scenes of intense torture.  There is a lot of good in the film but I did have a major problem with it and that was its inconsistent tone.  Maybe inconsistent is the wrong word here but while the film is definitely a thriller, there is also a lot of comedy in it too.  In my opinion, I think that Keshales and Papushado were attempting something that the Coen Brothers are fantastic at but is very hard to do and that is to come up with quite the dark tale but infuse it with black comedy throughout.  If they could have pulled this off, “Big Bad Wolves” would have been sensational, but unfortunately the comedy in the film is just too broad and silly that it ends up taking the edge off the drama and thriller aspects of the film entirely.  Another issue I had with the comedy is that it was a bit too repetitive; the joke was always the same.  Gidi is about to enact brutal torture on Dror when his mother rings him, or his cake has to come out of the oven.  While it may be funny once, the joke of always being interrupted wears thin after awhile.  The fact that the film deals with quite heavy topics like paedophilia, rape, torture and murder is another reason I find that the comedy falls flat because there really is nothing to laugh about when it comes to these topics in regards to young children.

Two strong points that the movie has is its fantastic score and its gorgeous visuals however again, what we see and hear does not correspond with the tone of the film, which causes a clash of sorts as we have different elements of the film fighting one another which obviously hurts the film as a whole.  Both the visuals and particularly the score are made as if for a pure thriller, so it comes across a little strange when the music is dramatic and suspenseful, while comedy is being portrayed on screen.  Do not get me wrong, I am not against having comedy in this film, it is just that I think it has been handled poorly and far too broad.  In terms of the visuals and cinematography, I got a real Park Chan-Wook and Kim Jee-Woon feel to it all, which is a massive complement.  Every frame just has an exact feel to it, like it has been clearly worked out well before shooting.  From a technical point of view, it is obvious to see that Keshales and Papushado have drastically improved in their direction and appear to be much more confident in their talents.  They show great competency in using a number of camera techniques but really excel in their use of slow motion.  Every time a child is on screen, the film reverts to slow motion which adds to the fairy tale like atmosphere and also increases the suspense of the scene.

The title “Big Bad Wolves” immediately invokes the visual world of fairy tales, and while the majority of the film abandons that idea, it is brought to the forefront in the incredible opening scene.  This scene is absolute genius and is the best thing about the film by a mile as we witness three young children playing an innocent game of “hide and seek”.  As I mentioned, the entire scene is shot in slow motion, as we watch the two girls laughing and looking for a place to hide while the boy is counting.  We see one girl hide in a free standing wardrobe, while the other finds her own place to hide.  She is immediately found, and when the boy finally opens the wardrobe expecting to find the other girl, all that remains is a single red shoe, symbolising that she has been kidnapped.  It is a grandiose opening sequence that sadly the rest of the film does not hold up to, but in fairness, the majority of the film is shot in a completely different style.

“Bad Bad Wolves” mines similar ground to Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners” where the (perceived) hunter suddenly becomes the hunted.  We watch once normal men do horrible things to another human being in an attempt to find their daughters and we, the audience, are asked to think about whether these men, through these deeds, are just as bad as the antagonists they are torturing.  While their intentions may be honourable, does this mean anything if the way they go about it is totally inhumane and illegal, or to put it simply; does the end justify the means?  Thankfully neither film gives an answer to the question, rather they leave it up to the viewer to make up their own mind, but once again due to the tone of “Big Bad Wolves”, I found the questions asked carried less gravitas than those in “Prisoners” even though they are closely related.  It is hard to be jovial about a dark subject and then expect the audience to answer questions posed by the filmmakers in a more serious manner than they are themselves.

Looking over this review, you would swear that it was a negative one, but at the end of the day, there was a lot about “Big Bad Wolves” that I liked and I can see myself revisiting it again in the future.  The reason I am harping so much on the negatives is that I am frustrated because as good as it is, it had the opportunity to be so much better.  The film has some high points; the opening sequence, the film’s gorgeous visual style and impressive score, but they seem to be constantly fighting against the uneven tone of the picture.  As you may have guessed by now, I believe the filmmakers have made a huge error in judgement regarding the tone of “Big Bad Wolves” but everything else has been done really well. Technically the film is a big improvement from “Rabies” and I look future to future films from this talented Israeli pair.

3.5 Stars.