Bal-Can-Can
Bal-Can-Can
| 12 December 2005 (USA)
Bal-Can-Can Trailers

A Macedonian military deserter and his Italian blood-brother are searching for a dead grandmother wrapped up in a stolen carpet, all over the Balkan's criminal underworld.

Reviews
kolo-5

I could have given an 8 for the first half hour, and an 5 for the rest of the movie. It starts well and funny, but ends in a Rambo style. There is quite a lot of laughter in this movie, but when it comes to tears, it is of bad taste. As of the two main characters, one of them, Genovese is resolved badly, you never get the real essence of this character, he seems as a self-confident guy in one moment and a villain in an other, a man of connections now, and a man unable to resolve an easy option later. His death serves the plot, but is unrealistic an unjustified. While Trendafil, the other main character, is more stable although unbelievable in his Rambo style transformation. The end, with killings, is all predictable and it changes the style of the whole movie. I guess it is for these, that the movie didn't make it in major festivals. Worth watching, anyway.

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Stanislav

9/10Ruza and her husband Trendafil Karanfilov live together with "baba Zumbula" (granny Zumbula). Even though they have names like flowers, their life is no picnic. They can hardly afford the food for a food fight. But they have even bigger problem; the war is starting in their country. As much as they are unhappy with the war, their neighbor Dzango Sapun couldn't be more happier. Under his slogan "For fatherland everything!" Dzango tries to enroll Trendafil into the army. Trendafil is not much of a military man. So he and his wife are planning to escape to neighboring Bulgaria. During the escape baba Zumbula dies, and what's even worse her body is missing. Now, Trendafil is on the journey, trying to find the missing granny. At his side is Santino Genovese. Santino has never met Trendafil before, but he is helping in an attempt to repay his father's debt to Trendafil's father.Movie uses stereotypes about people in neighboring Balkan countries to tell the story of their journey. And the stereotype are used in a rather funny way. My favorite was a "businessman" (war criminal) from Belgrade who goes jogging while shooting from his gun and with an orchestra behind him.If you aren't familiar with situation in ex-Yugoslavia you are going to miss some points of the movie, but still; worth watching.9/10

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sinco

I must say I am a lover of Macedonian culture, especially music and film. That is probably one of the reasons why I expected so much and got so little from this. This one turned out to be a sheer disappointment.First of all, the script is, well...bad. The characters have zero believability and the "plot" is garbage. (Chasing a carpet with a dead granny all over Balkan countries until it is found in Kosovo may sound interesting until you actually see it. It just doesn't work.) The symbolism is either shallow or far-fetched. The acting is not so bad, but unfortunately nothing much could be done with the terrible script. Directing was not so bad either but then, there was that element of what I would call snobbery (both in the script and directing)that I absolutely detested.Maybe this could have been a good movie, unfortunately it is not. It made me watch again the beautiful Macedonian movie "Before the Rain" just to forget this disaster as soon as possible.Normally, I would give it 3/10, however I think the current IMDb rating is very unrealistic, so I'm giving it 1/10.

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shyes

I have been wanting to see this movie for a while now and I must say I was not disappointed. I found it to be very funny in a very weird way. I love the two main characters Trendafil Karanfilov played by Vlado Jovanovski and Santino Genovese played by Adolfo Margiotta. NOt really speaking the same language as each other, it was interesting to watch them go on in the search of that carpet. I found the mutual understanding between them to be very interesting and well put despite the language barrier. Personanly I think it worked well. I think it's well worth watching. Cheers:)

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