Review of Remake

Remake (2003)
6/10
A neutral, non-biased review
28 October 2020
I am Romanian so neither Serb nor Bosnian, but of course the war affected us and drove us firmly into acceptance of EU and NATO membership. Both Serbs and Bosnians made many films about this subject, with the more famous Bosnian films either lamenting the collapse of humanity ("Perfect Circle" (1997), "No Man's Land" (2001), or focusing on the emotional aftermath of rape and family destruction ("Grbavica" (2006), "Halima's Path" (2012). The Serbian films went from mourning the loss of Yugoslavia ("Underground" (1995), "Pretty Village Pretty Flame" (1996) to self-pitying critique of the Milosevic regime ("Cabaret Balkan" (1998), "The Professional" (2003). All of these are really good films though with strong storytelling which give the viewer a good idea about the state of mind the countries were in. "Remake", however, is one of the nationalist efforts which are less well rounded, and seem built on displaying a maximum amount of Serbian atrocities. There are no moral gray zones, just a fight between the good Bosnians and the evil Serbs. Its display of camp conditions is accurate, but there is little narrative balance. Its domestic success is quite understandable given how nationalist Serbs were becoming at the time. But it's not a great film as the many two-line reviews here suggest, and has never received a proper international DVD release. Its claimed commercial success is impossible to verify and may very well be fabricated, as it is suspicious how many recent reviews and Wikipedia updates this film receives. Don't get me wrong, this is not a bad film. However, all of the aforementioned films have better stories, better acting, and do a better job of explaining the war to foreigners.
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