I love this movie so much

Don't listen to the negative reviews

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

This was a complicated and "controversial" topic where one man's "terrorist" is an angel of other man's mythology. Interpretations of the very historical event of assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Austro-Hungarian king-to-be, still differ. It was an excuse for the beginning of World War I. Even one hundred years after the event, the topic itself is so sensitive. Writer and director Srdjan Koljevic walks with confidence on that slippery ground. This was a result of several simple but brilliant decisions he made. Let's start with writing. The story is essentially a reconstruction of the trial, it is based on documents. This provided a certain frame of objectivity and in that aspect the film can be used as an educational tool. The second crucial decision was to put in the centre Rudolf Zistler, the young lawyer who defended members of Young Bosnia. Zistler was court appointed, the "machine" counted on his lack of experience, but he is educated, professional, idealistic. He believes in what he does, he believes in law. That was the last thing the empire needed at that moment. Choosing Zistler as a point of balance provided seamless integration of various views into the main flow of the story. It enabled the film to dive into various intimate dramas and fully engage in the political and historical controversies of the event, but also to transcend them by asking more universal questions about freedom and acts of violence that come from the individuals and from the state. With Zistler as a central point around which everything happens the film grows into a bridge where we can actually meet with each other and see in each other our fragile humanity. This itself deserves respect.Another great decision was to involve Gavrilo Princip in the story only where it was very necessary. In a way, Koljevic stays away from him. There are two giants of this film, Zistler and Princip. Zitsler provides film with complex perspectives, while nineteen year old Princip is idealistic, dark and hot-headed, he is bigger than history and the real story about him is told better through everything around him.As a director, Koljevic sticks to a classical approach underlined with finely dosed amounts of lyricism. You can call it "good old BBC" style, you can compare it to Bruce Beresford or even Hugh Hudson, but it is a "middle of the road" approach that seemingly doesn't bring something new. Well, when The Iliad and the Odyssey were shaped all those stories were already known in detail by the audience, Homer didn't invent them, they were part of history or mythology. Poor Homer didn't even invent the style, it had to be the Greek hexameter. He "only" had some freedom in ordering events and charging them with emotions and ideas... and multiple points of view. Koljevic chose his limitations wisely, "conservative" directing style worked perfectly. The pace of the film is seemingly slow, but it keeps you on your toes. You are drown into a network of intimate dramas while you never loose a view of whirlpool of history. This is a rock solid film.P.S. Somebody said that this movie feels as a work done for television. I guess that was not meant to be a compliment. It didn't feel like "that TV" to me. On the contrary. I don't know what is his secret regarding work with actors. Nikola Rakocevic as Zistler is brilliant, but so are all the other actors in this film.

This is not a very cinematic film, it looks more like a TV film, a TV show or a documentary re-enactment film. The reason is that this is actually a TV show cut to make a film. This film also exists in an episodic format, with more minutes I believe.The TV-quality is the biggest flaw with the film. The cinematography is not great. No attention is given to color grading. Lighting is also weak. Scenes in a prison cell at night have too much light. Camera movement is not good. The camera captures what's in front of it, but doesn't do what cinema cameras do - move, pan, tilt, etc. I'm not nitpicking. We have to mention these things because we want the cinema of Serbia to improve. These advanced ideas do exist in some Serbian films but not so much in Serbian TV, which is stuck in the 90's. So when someone makes a Serbian film out of a TV production, it looks old. Not 1914 old, but 1994 old.The acting is good, but I'm surprised by the casting a little. Could they not find a German-speaking actor to play Rudy? Or someone not fluent in Serbo-Croatian to play the Czech Malek? Why is so little attention given to accents?I don't care if someone has a 2000's Belgrade accent when he's supposed to be a Bosnian peasant from 1914, but did Rudy really speak so fluently and eloquently in Serbo-Croatian? What about Malek? Couldn't they have brought a Slovene or someone with an imperfect accent?Those are my complaints.The rest of the film is very, very good. The acting is convincing. There is no overacting or wooden acting. The music was good, but I felt that they could've given more time to music, either bands, radio or score. Music is a tool and it wasn't used much in this film. Everything looked convincing, like it was 1914. It was well-researched and there were no short-cuts taken. It did not fall to modern political bickering. I'm not going to call it a pro-Yugo film, but it felt like one (and that's a good thing in my book.) Many Slavs lived under Austro-Hungarian occupation and annexation and there were both Pro-Yugoslav and Pan-Slavic movements. It just happens that these boys decided to act on it.There aren't enough shots of the country. A lot of stuff happens indoors. It's not hard to do establishing shots or mood setting exterior shots (fields, buildings, etc.) This film is a very educational film. It gives you the sense of the time in many ways. But this film is not for everyone. It is a legal drama more than anything. I like that kind of thing, but many don't. If you like courtroom shows and like historical stories, this one is for you.

What is very strong point of the movie is full immersion to the point of history - costumes,locations, sepia effects (visual side) but also ability to realistically and without much bias represent one of the turning points of history. And by that I mean - not only representation of cause and slide to First world war story, but in individual sacrifices and human stories of many people involved, their duties, emotions and roles. Even its high duration, over 2 hours, and kind of slow pace, movie never looses the interest and dramatic effect and reminds me of the "played documentary" genre. High regards for the movie, and honest recommendation. Exactly what today's cinema needs - realism, not only effects or action.

Movies are more and more regarded as an entertainment, deprived of any kind of deeper analysis that can leave a man wondering and affect his view of addressed subject.This is not that kind of a movie. This is art. Its goal is not (only) to entertain. Authors managed to show an important historical event from the very interesting viewpoint. They managed to distance themselves from daily politics and show an objective, historically accurate story.Anyone interested in events prior to the First World War should definitely not miss this rare jewel in movie industry.