Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Such a frustrating disappointment

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This dramatization of "the shot heard round the world," the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, turns the story into a police procedural with at its center an impeccably groomed detective who faces difficulties with the bosses, as is often true with the police procedural. This incorruptible outsider who rides a bike, not a carriage, and doesn't smoke, develops a theory of the assassination that doesn't entirely jibe with the historical reality, but which is very entertaining. Although ten young Serbs were stationed along the Archduque's path, Pfeffer, the hero, finds that they are actually tools of the German and Austrian military, who want to start a war with Serbia. You can imagine how well this goes over. I found myself skeptical, since I remember seeing the museum in Sarajevo glorifying Gavrilo Princip and the movement for Serbian independence. Nonetheless, the movie is beautifully made, with colorful costumes emerging from the shadows of all these conspiracy theories, beautiful horses, old buildings and lovely interiors. There is a romance between the Jewish Pfeffer and a beautiful married Serb heiress to make a change from assassination, torture, and execution. Recommended for lovers of historical costume dramas.

Over all a slick production about things almost no one has any knowledge about any more. I knew about the Archduke being assassinated in Sarajevo but no details... did not know the invasion of Serbia was the casus belli of WWI. The film was a tad heavy on the digital enhancement side but not too bad.I have several pet peeves with the story. The hero is Jew turned Christian DA type who is charged with investigating the Archduke's assassination. There was the dose of ugly anti-semitism.... is there nothing that can be produced with out this particular moral lesson? It dilutes the story line...which is a tad melodramatic and unbelievable anyway. To wit=The real cause for the Austro-Hungarian interest in Serbia was a cabal of greedy capitalists who wanted a railroad from Berlin to Baghdad that had to go through Serbia...sort of like the Keystone Pipeline idea. This lefty fodder is simply not likely as Baghdad in 1914 would have had all the economic interest of dry camel dung. Oil was not discovered until 1927. Also Serbia had been involved in numerous Balkan wars trying to enlarge its territory and was anti Austro-Hungarian pro Russian from 1903 on... it was anything but an innocent bystander. So it is a historical ignorant plot.Then there is the yuppie love angle...beautiful Serbian suffragette heiress (married no less) is the romantic interest of the Jewish DA.Wash out the PC stuff and get a more historically accurate motive and it would have been dramatically better.

On the positive side the movie had great costumes, interior and background scenese. On the other hand the story began okay, acting was good but halfway into the movie we get some conspiracy theory shoveled down our throat that feels like modern day leftist propaganda. What do I mean by that? Well the assassination on Archduke was a real conspiracy theory on it's own that has been proved by documents. The Serbian secret organization '' The Black Hand'' wanted the Archduke out of their way because he was very popular among minorities in the empire. He promised more independence and self control for those minorities when he would succeed the throne. If successful the Serbians within the empire would lose their dedication to be united with the Serbian home country in any possible future. Instead this movie propagates at the end that the Austro-Hungarian empire intentionally let the Archduke get assassinated by reducing his security and having coerced the driver by driving straight to Gavrilo Princip's hands. ( even tough in reality it was Ferdinand who suggested to drive back towards the hospital ) All so they and Germany would have a reason to go to war for financial gains. A suggestion is made that they needed Serbia to build the Baghdad-Berlin railroad, in order that oil could be transported from there. It sounds just as ridiculous as the tenacious conspiracy theory that Bush knew Al-Qaida would hit the Twin towers, and ordered the FBI to back down. All so he can declare war for oil profits a two years later. And to back up the veracity of their argument they have the characters say anti-semitic things to the detective who is a Jew converted to Christianity, just to make them extra evil. Yeah sure there were anti-semites back then and now, but come the Austrian officers corps consisted 40% out of Jews because they trusted them more than the countless ethnicities, so it wasn't that bad.

"Sarajevo" is an Austrian/Czech co-production from 2014 that deals with a crucial event on its 100th anniversary. It is a 95-minute movie in the German language that came out the very same year that director Prochaska and writer Ambrosch made the pretty well-known western movie "Das finstere Tal". But back to this one here: It is a small screen release and the title already gives away that there is a historic context to it because Sarajevo is of course the place where it all started over a century ago in terms of World War I. On a completely unrelated note, recently, the film got a bit of a boost because it got picked up on Netflix. And this movie once again confirmed for me that I have much more interest in World War II than World War I. The problem wasn't at all here that there was no war action, but it dealt a lot more with the interrogations of the people responsible for the shooting of the Austrian heir to the throne. The cast includes a handful names that German film buffs will probably recognize, such as Heino Ferch, Edin Hasanovic and Erwin Steinhauer perhaps too. The film is very sterile and bleak and it's probably not that great for younger audiences because I did not feel it delivered too much in the historic context and there are relatively cruel references, not just about the assassination, but also about executions. So yeah, all in all, the film's dialogues were not good enough for me personally to work as a mostly dialogue-driven film for almost 100 minutes. I personally give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.