The Wounds Reviews

Chaos reigns in Serbian director Srdjan Dragojevic's high-octane look at two Belgrade juvenile delinquents coming of age during the turbulent years 1991-1996. The movie opens in '96, amidst rejoicing on the streets that American economic sanctions have been lifted. Teen pals Pinki (Dusan Pekic) and Kraut (Milan Maric) are trapped in their car by the bedlam, and Pinki recounts the story of their short, brutish lives. As 13-year-olds in a rundown housing project, Pinki, Kraut and geeky hanger-on Dijabola (Andreja Jovannovic) worship volatile Dickie (Dragan Bjelogrlic), a flashy black marketeer. As the ongoing civil war erodes middle-class standards of living (inflation gobbles up savings, work disappears and sanctions create shortages of food and other commodities), opportunists like Dickie flourish. Meanwhile, Dijabola's sex-bomb mother Lidja (Vesna Trivalic) hosts a popular talk show called "Street Pulse," which makes TV celebrities out of street thugs. Dickie is perpetually angry that Lidja won't have him on her program (he's not the "right caliber" of criminal), while Pinki and Kraut lust for her and Dickie's girlfriend Suki (Branka Katic) in equal measure. Under Dickie's brutal guidance, Pinki and Kraut develop into amoral, hopped-up drug dealers, thieves and murderers, so morally stunted and mad at the world that in the end they have nowhere to turn their rage except on each other. Surreal, jittery and sometimes painfully beautiful, this mordantly funny film (inspired by the exploits of two real-life punks) is as steeped in movie mythology as its characters; imagine A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by way of TRAINSPOTTING and NATURAL BORN KILLERS. Dragojevic doesn't romanticize the youthful killers, but places the blame for their viciousness squarely on the shoulders of his countrymen, too caught up in mindless sloganeering and an endless cycle of bloody retribution for past wrongs to create a decent world in which to raise their children.