Shadowplay: Review. By Alif Majeed.

Revenge movies have taken into many sizes and shapes over the years. The best thing about the revenge movies is the way how one filmmaker’s opinion of revenge can change from another’s. There is something about watching people get their just desserts that makes it very satisfying. 

For example, when Ingmar Bergman made The Virgin Spring, the depiction of the act of violence and the subsequent revenge was so swift and matter of fact, it was almost we were a voyeur helplessly looking in, and there is no satisfaction to be had. But when Wes Craven remade the same movie into The Last House on the Left, the same act of both the rape and the subsequent comeuppance was so protracted and stretched that its violence is one of the major factors for its cult status today. (Add to its ironic tagline, “it’s only a movie!”)

So watching Shadowplay brought some mixed emotions in me. The central performance, by Milan Ondrik, who is after the guy responsible for the death of his estranged wife, is striking and effective. But the whole movie often felt tiring and could stretch your patience thin. 

The movie starts with Eva being at the wrong place at the wrong time and witnessing a robbery while jogging in the night. After attempting to contact her estranged husband Kavka, she gets beaten up and kidnapped by the robber. The subsequent scene that shows her demise calls back moves like Amores Perros at how a random incident can turn into a stroke of luck and change the lives of everyone involved.

Ridden by guilt at not picking up his wife’s call and when he realises how the murderer can get away with the murder and a much lighter sentence, he takes things in his own hands. 

Reading that synopsis, it’s easy to mistake the movie for a 70s grind house revenge thriller. But director Peter Bebjak pays much attention to ensure that this man’s journey takes us in at how he wants to get his revenge even if it tests our patience along the way. What holds it’s all up together is Milan Ondrik’s performance as a man wracked with guilt about his wife’s death for which he feels he is responsible. You can feel the heartbreak and aching melancholy of this man who is destined to self destruct his way to get his vengeance. 

His scene where he meets and asks the killer why he did it also touched a nerve for me. Jan Janovsky, who plays the killer, depicts him as a man who is equally wracked with guilt but cannot admit wrongdoing because of the system and there is a certain sensitivity in the way he portrays the killer.

That, for me, was my major issue with Shadowplay. The slow burn melancholic approach the movie takes might just not be for everyone. It takes a long while to get going that you might get tempted to just get to the end to get to the revenge part. But watch it for the central performance of Milan Ondrik, who just about helps you complete the journey even if the movie could test you till the very end.

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