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Essential Killing (2010)

Director: Jerzy Skolimowski

Time Out rating

Average user rating

22 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Maintaining the quality of 2008’s sadly unreleased ‘Four Nights with Anna’ – which marked the return to filmmaking of Polish maverick Jerzy Skolimowski after a 17-year sabbatical as a painter – ‘Essential Killing’ is a ruthless, darkly funny survival movie charged with provocative political undertones. Vincent Gallo delivers a career-best performance (helped no end by the fact he is silent throughout) as a nameless, petrified Jihadi soldier who is captured by American troops, subjected to torture and who then escapes into a snowy wilderness while being rendered across country. The film asks how low would you go to preserve your own life, as Gallo’s encroaching delirium leads him to plumb ever more base depths. Delivering an absolute minimum of context, the film dares us to forge our own reasons for rooting for or despising this savage. Also, the way in which Gallo’s suffering is translated through a cascade of sound and images makes ‘Essential Killing’ a film to utter in the same breath as Elem Klimov’s sense-battering 1985 World War II film, ‘Come and See’.

Author: David Jenkins

Time Out London Issue 2119: March 31 – April 6, 2011

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User reviews of this film

Big Al said...

Posted on Apr 29 2012 09:17 I really enjoyed the unexplained killing of the three dudes at the start. I did however become a bit bored with the series random events that followed... The dog walked past the tv, a car drove past the house, the sun wet down, my girlfriend got bored and left the room, the clock ticked. Great afternoon of film viewing.

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Marek said...

Posted on Nov 22 2011 19:31 Could not agree more with gilmuni. Narrow-minded bigots, religious fundamentalists and George Bush types do not like this film at all - I wonder why?

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gilmuni said...

Posted on Nov 21 2011 19:49 Most of the negative reviews in these comments appear to be from people who have never met a jihadist brought up in the mountains of Afghanistan. Not saying i have but i have met people in that part of the world brought up in poverty and acculturated to see the world through a narrow lens of religion and clan. Drop someone like this in the middle of a forest in eastern Europe and they certainly might behave the way Mohamed does. The set piece criticism seems a ridiculous complaint to me that appears to be used by people who think using such phrases makes them sound like an expert film critic.The film is in my view a powerful one both about what a human will do to survive and about the brutal war on terrorism that creates the conditions for this mans survival struggle to take place.Get over your American exceptional-ism and try to put yourself in someone else's shoes. Certainly there have been equally bizarre situations in movies you have seen that you liked that compare favorably to the logging truck fight and the breast milk scene. Open your minds people !

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Erasmus said...

Posted on Oct 02 2011 19:29 I watched this collection of scenes (movie?) and its a total load of trash...not worth the DVDs its burnt into. The escape scene is ridiculous. The director claims he avoided any politics. But if a picture tells a thousand words then the scenes are very political. The search team goes after him for a few kilometres and then lose him? And a chopper gets a warning beeper and backs off and the rest of the film is just a walk through the snow covered forest with some berry picking , breast milk and a night in a cottage. The film ends with the white horse standing there. What rubbish.

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Ciaran said...

Posted on Sep 30 2011 22:56 So disappointed by this film. Stumbles from one ludicrously implausible set piece to another, with nothing in the way of actual drama or suspense. I'm all for suspension of disbelief if it helps the viewer to understand the filmmakers ideas and helps to stimulate debate - but this was just ridiculous. And let's not waste any effort trying to 'discuss' this - escaped prisoner goes to any lengths to avoid capture. There was absolutely nothing more to the film that that basic premise. Reminded me of The Fugitive when he escaped initially. Did not enjoy at all.

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Trent said...

Posted on Sep 23 2011 12:01 I think you are getting away from the point that this movie points towards a sympathetic view towards the Taliban, as a soldier i was disgusted by this movie. And at no point did I witness any 'essential' killing, what a crock shite I think the people that made this movie need to take a long hard look at themselves.

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The voice said...

Posted on Aug 28 2011 20:54 In all honesty the biggest load of shite iv ever seen to be realistic nothing essential about killing three guys at the start .syco rampage would have been better title

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h2g2 said...

Posted on Jul 19 2011 22:41 would that be the brainwashing that doesn't happen till after he's killed the three Yanks with the grenade?

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Jimmy Mac said...

Posted on Jun 08 2011 13:03 Excellent film - but cant undesrtand why no-one has, so far, mentioined the brain washing the main character must have gone through to turn him into a ruthless killer.

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Marek said...

Posted on Apr 17 2011 15:29 Dear All,
I did not say that he had any choice at all in this film. (perhaps some cynics may suggest he had a choice of kill or be killed). What I meant was simply this:- Is man inately a wild animal, who will always regress to this when he is in peril? Or are other factors involved? Does the environment that the person is in have a part to play, too?

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Albert said...

Posted on Apr 16 2011 07:42 Imagine, after making the DECISION to stowaway on a logging truck to put distance between himself and his pursuers, to arrive at a lumberyard, and then coming across a convenient running chainsaw in the hands of a lumberjack that had just been using it a moment before! And then making the DECISION to try to kill the much larger guy rather than surrender.
In every interaction he made a DECISION to kill or not, which he didn't do in every instance. I thought it was pretty amazing how his conflicts over his choices and actions were expressed without words.

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dumdumboy said...

Posted on Apr 16 2011 03:40 Marek I'm not sure how you can suggest the film questions what would one do to survive. When apparently ALL you have to do is generally wander in any given direction before REMARKABLY coming across a convenient trapped dog; a convenient running chainsaw; a convenient milk-laden cyclist!!!! REALLY!!!!! He makes NOT ONE decision about survival other than to apply the result of the tableau playing out in front of him. There are many films that question violence, levels of violence and THIS IS NOT ONE OF THEM. He may be 72 and may have spent a long time in the cold making this but SO WHAT? This is ABUT THE FILM not the director's plight. Go see 'Raging Bull' 'Taxi Driver' if you want to see films that question what man might do with violence...

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Marek said...

Posted on Apr 15 2011 17:24 Deeply ambigious film, this. On the one hand, it asks the question - what would you do to survive? On the other, it simultaneously asks where do thes 'base instincts' come from, are they inside all of us? The film is very, very disorientating. You do not know where you are, and the direction of the film helps with this. there is also one point, that few critics/reviewers have seemed to notice. This is a very short film, at only just over 80 minutes. However, it tells us all we need to know in the time. It is a very well-paced, and darkly funny film. The only criticism I would have is that the ending seems to be very much against all that has gone before. But do go and see this film.

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M R said...

Posted on Apr 03 2011 23:13 re: dumdumboy's comments: it's true that a film or song can have allegorical references and still have polish like dumdum's Bowie example--or can have a rawer edge more akin to old folk ballads or Dylan - where immediacy, lyrical content and a rougher emotional feel trump polish - I think this is closer to the atmosphere Skolimowski was going for. Keeping the music metaphor, it was a song at a different tempo than the action film norm (or a Bowie song if you prefer). I thought the director articulated his aims well in an interview with the Canadian Metronews:
"What’s interesting is that as Gallo’s nameless protagonist becomes more desperate, the film’s pace slows, rather than accelerates — almost an action movie in reverse.
“I felt like if I grabbed the audience’s attention in the first few scenes, like an action movie, I could gradually slow the pace and turn it into a more poetic or philosophical film,” says Skolimowski, adding that it was precisely these tactics that caught the attention of the Venice jury’s president, Quentin Tarantino."
It's hard for me to think of a 40 day and night shoot in three countries in conditions going down to minus -35 as "lazy" for a 72-year-old director. I do wonder about the marketing and viewers drawn with false expectations because of the slambam trailer and "kill to survive" advertising hype. I will say the bit with the tree got a little close to Wile E. Coyote but I found the other parts fit the increasing desperation and delirium. The film hinges on Gallo's Mohammad and if you don't 'believe' him, even though he was obviously designed to be sympathetically convoluted, it could just seem like a series of slapped together set pieces but I thought the scenes flowed with perfect sense and with everything having a reason to it. It can be seen that it was not a huge budget film but I didn't see it as lazy in any way.

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Phil Ince said...

Posted on Apr 03 2011 20:06 The opening half hour in English is strangely crude but the later part in Poland (or wherever) sometimes looks gorgeous. Unfortunately, I wound up finding the film funny. The hapless bastard murders his way across the world while, in the course of 45 minutes, in an entirely empty, snow-filled wilderness a Pythonesque quantity of misfortune befalls him. An accidental comedy.

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