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No Man's Land | 2001 | R | - 2.6.7
Satire taking place during the Bosnian war: Two soldiers, a Bosnian and a Serb, are trapped in a trench right between their front lines. A fellow soldier, who seems dead, is also lying on the trench floor, right on top of a spring-loaded mine set to explode if he is moved. Unable to communicate with their respective command posts, the two soldiers must somehow escape their absurd predicament and get out of the trench without being killed by their own troops or the bomb. With Branko Djuric, Rene Bitorajac, Filip Sovagovic, Georges Siatidis, Serge-Henri Valcke, Simon Callow and Katrin Cartlidge. In Slovenian, French and English, with English subtitles. [1:37]
SEX/NUDITY 2 - We see a photo of a nude man in a man's wallet (we see his back and buttocks). A man at gunpoint is told to remove his clothes (we see him in his boxers) and he runs along the rim of a trench waving a flag, and two men in their underwear yell and jump around waving flags. A woman in a short skirt sits on a man's desk and her jacket reveals some cleavage.
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VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - A group of soldiers are gunned down as they try to cross a field; one is shot in the head (we see a bloody spot), and two are thrown through the air by a grenade launched from a tank. A man throws a knife into the ground near a man, and then threatens him and a group of people with a gun. A man is shot and another man is shot repeatedly. A man shoots two men: one is killed and one is wounded in the stomach (we see his bloody wound). A man is shot in the leg and screams in agony (we see his blood covered hands as he tries to bandage himself). A trench with three soldiers in it is fired upon by artillery guns. A man plants a spring-loaded mine under a presumably dead body so that when the enemy comes to retrieve the dead soldier they will be blown up. A man lying on a mine pulls another man down on top of him in order to make him drop his weapon. A man with a knife tackles another man and cuts his arm (we see some blood on his sleeve). An explosive expert tries to defuse a mine that a man is lying on. A man at gunpoint is told to remove his clothes and he runs along the rim of the trench waving a flag. A man sees the dead bodies of his comrades. We see a man with a bloody wound on his shoulder; at one point he opens his shirt and we see the bullet hole and a lot of blood. We see photos and newsreel-type footage of dead and wounded bodies being carried through streets, lined up on the side of a road, and scattered across a road. A group of armed soldiers walk through foggy woods. Two men talk about their villages having been pillaged and burned, and of the women in the villages being raped.
LANGUAGE 7 - 28 F-words, 1 obscene hand gesture, 16 scatological terms, 4 anatomical terms, 14 mild obscenities, 1 religious exclamation, 1 derogatory term for a woman.
SUBSTANCE USE - Men are shown smoking cigarettes throughout the film.
DISCUSSION TOPICS - Optimism and pessimism, fear, ineffectiveness, ethnic cleansing, authority, the UN, peace, humanitarian aid, neutrality, deus ex machina.
MESSAGE - It's hard to work toward peace when people fundamentally hate each other. Neutrality does not exist in the face of war or murder.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.
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