A Gangster’s Life review – funny in parts, but not always deliberately

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Despite some interesting visuals, not even Tony Cook and Jonny Weldon can lift this poorly produced tale of a pair of dodgy lads hiding in Greece from a gangster Here is an odd film about a couple of dodgy lads who get on the wrong side of a bona fide gangster and have to hide out in Greece. It’s not thoughtless per se; rather, it lacks the resources to bring its vision successfully to screen. Its quirks are sometimes appealing and sometimes amateurish and, while a mixture of influences swirl about, from Bond to Kingsman to Guy Ritchie and even Mission: Impossible, the film-makers don’t have the necessary budget, meaning that it feels at times like a TikTok parody of more expensive films. It is a shame, because there are some interesting visual ideas that go beyond route one filming. Example: a goon beating a man tied to a chair on a crispy manicured lawn is filmed in a lovely wide shot, with a guy in the far distance calmly clipping the hedge. But it’s the post-production that is th...
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The Wire review – locals deal with razor-sharp border fence in migrant study

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Documentary sheds light on responses to a fence designed to keep migrants of the EU Schengen area, a dizzyingly complex issue

Endless newsreel and column inches have been devoted to Europe’s migrant crisis over the past decade, and we are no nearer to getting to grips with the problem. This documentary by Croatian director Tiha Gudac opens up a fresh perspective by focusing principally on the effects on destination or transit countries: namely a beautifully sylvan stretch of the Croat-Slovenian border demarcated by the Kupa River and, now, horrible lengths of coiled razor wire laid down by the EU to prevent migrants from breaching the Schengen area.

The border fence sullies farmland and forests, complicates river tourism and separates Croatian and Slovenian communities who have ties going back centuries. The Balkan region is one with particular sensitivity to artificial segregation, and the local people tentatively fight back: early on, we see Croats and Slovenians joining up for a cross-border fun run. For those with long memories, this grim palisade, and the inhumane rejection of non-Europeans it implies, chimes with wartime fascism. But not everyone sees it that way: one father, mother and daughter spend their family time crawling under the wire to scope out points on the frontier where interlopers might be hiding.

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