I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Don't Believe the Hype

Did you people see the same film I saw?

The acting in this movie is really good.

I'm voting a 9, because it's a convincing, good film. But as far a it being a true story.... not exactly. I was in Greece on vacation in 1998 when this happened. At the time; Albanian refugees were living in Greece. Greeks felt sorry for them, as they do for so many others;( their biggest downfall), and allowed them into their homes, jobs, lives... and in return they robbed banks, killed their hosts and terrorized the country. This movie portrayed the situation as an innocent, good-looking boy treated as a slave in Greece. With a bus full of Stockholm syndrome victims!! And done so well; I almost fell for it. I heard the entire thing live on the radio; this bastard shoved the grenade in the lady's pants and threatened to pull the pin for hours; and then finally did.

While this isn't a great film by any stretch, it is a very interesting fictional film based very loosely on a real-life incident. An Albanian living in Greece gets on a bus along with about 20 passengers. Shortly after the bus leaves town, the man reveals that he's got a grenade and an AK-47. He demands 500,000 Euros and some specific guns that the police supposedly know about but the audience viewing the film really doesn't understand. As the film progresses, the reasons for why the hijacking occurred are slowly leaked out through flashbacks. In many ways this seems intended to help explain and justify the hijacker's behaviors. While this is unsettling that they would try to make the viewer like or at least understand such evil behaviors, the writers did a good job of sucking the audience inside his dilemma and giving them some level of empathy.Excellent writing, direction and realistic acting make this a pretty good film. The only negatives are the presence of too much urinating in the film (yuck) and I was really left wondering about the real story--were the cops the "bad guys" and the kidnapper a frustrated and angry "innocent"?

Giannaris contributes one to the "hostage" film genre. I completely disagree with the other views expressed thus far, in that I found the film quite paced and engaging and his use of Stathis Papadopoulos as intuitively right. Describing him as "extremely buffed" is a bit hyperbolic. Stathis is no Arnold (thankfully) and can convey emotions missing from most action heroes/antiheroes--e.g., uncertainty, fear, and a childlike vulnerability next to the women who briefly mother him in the course of the film. Here's an inarticulate character who can't fully think things through, is in over his head, and yet desperate enough to make a last futile stand to be counted.And like all hostage films, it's not just about the captor but the captives. Kudos to the rest of the cast for their very believable performances that dynamically reveal their personal stories in the course of the journey and their changes in perspective on their collective situation and its significance. As one character says to the morally ambiguous cop-negotiator trying to get some of them released, "It's all of us or none of us." Kudos also to the cinematography that conveyed the overheated claustrophobia of a long bus ride that spans day and night and builds to its visual payoff in the climactic final moments.

I recently saw this film at a festival of Greek culture in London and unfortunately it had quite the opposite effect that the event intended, presenting modern Greece as a divided wasteland in a way that Giannaris seems to enjoy.As you can tell I'm not a fan of this man's work. Although most of his films demonstrate competence they never rise above their petty desire to appeal to the international market that Giannaris so obviously craves. To make matters worse he has insisted on casting his 'From the Edge of the City' boy-toy Stathis Papadopoulos in his recent films. The boy cannot act, and has about as much menace as a slightly cheesed-off male model. I think cinema has had enough of 'non-professional' casts being used as a means of supposedly adding 'realism' to a film. Drama schools exist for a reason.Ultimately, this film is a great disappointment. Especially considering the potential of the storyline.