Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with our very own Mr. Beaks, who is well known for talking in the magniloquent, weaving his magic on this flick. What'd he think of KONTROLL!?! Read on!!

KONTROLL (w. & d. Nimród Antal)

What Nimrod Antal’s KONTROLL lacks in substance – and, trust me, it lacks plenty – it more than compensates for with a stylistic ferocity lifted from the Danny Boyle school of impetuous posturing and crossbred with the jocular, roughhewn characteristics of the 1980’s buddy cop genre. When it’s cooking, you think TRAINSPOTTING; when it’s amusing, you recall RUNNING SCARED (The Hyams Variation); when it’s derailing, you’ve got MONEY TRAIN with subtitles.

Fortunately, Antal favors the accelerator, hurtling his debut feature forward with enough precocious flourishes to keep you reasonably occupied even when it’s readily apparent that little of thematic substance is being conveyed. The narrative, such as it is, is tethered to a ragtag group of ticket inspectors toiling thanklessly in the Budapest subway system (which the press notes brag is the second oldest in the world). Their leader is the young Bulcsú (Sándor Csány), a disheveled and disaffected lad who resides twenty-four/seven in this subterranean limbo. Most of his time is spent absorbing scorn either from the passengers he randomly interrogates, his superiors who bristle at his irreverence, or a rival gang of impeccably uniformed (i.e. fascist) inspectors (the Omegas to Bulcsú group’s Deltas). When off the clock, he steals naps on the cold, dirty pavement of a deserted platform.

In fact, this is how Antal, after an ominous prologue setting up the film’s half-hearted serial killer angle, rather effectively introduces the scrappy fellow. But, aside from one encounter with a former colleague of some vague stripe from the topside world, Bulcsú never becomes more than the sum total of his quirks. He suffers from an existential malaise of, it appears, his own making, and uses his mundane job as a means of staving off pesky introspection; that is, until he meets Sofie (Eszter Bela), a cute young woman who, in a gesture of supremely forced whimsy, waddles about in a bear outfit. She stirs in him a sense that something more than his presumably overpowering body odor – Bulcsú steadily accumulates grime and bruises as the film progresses – is rotten down below, leading to a dream sequence in which he follows her into a dark, dank rabbit hole somewhere in the deeper recesses of the subterranean maze where he discovers the hooded serial killer (who may be a figment of his imagination, as Bulcsú superiors believe the sudden rash of deaths are the self-inflicted work of “jumpers”).

The best moments in KONTROLL revolve around “railing”, a mas macho showdown where rival inspectors board a local, exit from the rear as it leaves the station, and sprint to the next platform as the express closes fast behind them. The first face-off, between Bulcsú and his Greg Marmalard-esque antagonist, is imaginatively staged so that the particulars of the contest are explained as it occurs. Antal, who exhibits the kind of showman’s flair that should make him eminently employable in Hollywood, cleverly waits until the final life-or-death race between Bulcsú and the killer to pull off a lengthy tracking shot that leaves both participants and audience members breathless.

Propelled by the pulsating score of NEO, KONTROLL slows down very infrequently, which is to its ultimate benefit, as there’s little on its mind save for the aforementioned anguish of discovering one’s purpose in the confusing hubbub of modern life. Lots of filmmakers have gotten away with throwing on excess layers flash and attitude to mask their material’s malnourished state, which is why it’s a little distressing that the humorous vignettes intended to wring laughs from the ineffectiveness of policing turnstile-less subways without firearms are so singularly unfunny.* Perhaps it’s a translation problem. Most likely, it’ll sound a lot better in English, the language in which I fully expect Antal’s next film to be shot. Still, for all its deficiencies, KONTROLL manages to be a very entertaining audition.

KONTROLL opens today in New York City.

Faithfully submitted,

Mr. Beaks

*Actually, the funniest gag in the film may not be intentional; it’s an introduction by a Hungarian transit official assuring the viewer that, while the film misrepresents its milieu, he still really digs the movie.