tomchak This dramatization of "the shot heard round the world," the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, turns the story into a police procedural with at its center an impeccably groomed detective who faces difficulties with the bosses, as is often true with the police procedural. This incorruptible outsider who rides a bike, not a carriage, and doesn't smoke, develops a theory of the assassination that doesn't entirely jibe with the historical reality, but which is very entertaining. Although ten young Serbs were stationed along the Archduque's path, Pfeffer, the hero, finds that they are actually tools of the German and Austrian military, who want to start a war with Serbia. You can imagine how well this goes over. I found myself skeptical, since I remember seeing the museum in Sarajevo glorifying Gavrilo Princip and the movement for Serbian independence. Nonetheless, the movie is beautifully made, with colorful costumes emerging from the shadows of all these conspiracy theories, beautiful horses, old buildings and lovely interiors. There is a romance between the Jewish Pfeffer and a beautiful married Serb heiress to make a change from assassination, torture, and execution. Recommended for lovers of historical costume dramas.

karris It's interesting that this story is told from the POV of someone Jewish, in love with a Serbian woman, with ample foreshadowing of the holocausts both would face in the 20th century. Few people realize a million Serbs were killed by the Austrians in WWI, including many reprisals on civilians. There's also scanty knowledge of the systematic extermination of Serbs by fascists in WWII. And of course, scanty knowledge, readily dismissed, of the extent Austria was going to to provoke a war with Serbia for years before the Archduke's visit. But if you follow the way they are referred to in this script, and the treatment they receive the picture is painted accurately. You know, things like "Those dirty Serb dogs," "It's a Serb-owned business, let's loot it." "Let's go wipe them off the face of the earth." It was Austrian people, apparently, making this film, acknowledging freely that this was a story of a tiny, indefensible country sitting in one of those hapless superpower thoroughfares, who is constantly overrun, who should have died out, like the Jews, centuries ago, but here they still are. I see some of the reviewers are doubting how believable the railroad-to-Baghdad theory is that's put forth in the script, but comprising the land route between Europe and the Middle East, there's always something somebody wants, and whoever wants to be powerful is always sticking their hand in that cookie jar, have been for millennia, all the way back to the Romans.It was quite refreshing to see a depiction of this historical/ political reality, instead of the 'Serbs as Fascists' delusional propaganda that has been rife in western media in recent decades. (Another cookie jar saga there.) I had a good laugh at the remark in the script the Austrian bureaucrats were making about the outrageous demands they'd make on Belgrade to be sure they were refused. Apparently somebody in Austria was listening to a similar Belgrade conversation ca. 1999. Thank you Austria: Krausz, Ambrosch, Prochaska. It's nice to know there are people who have observed the nature of Serbia vs. the 20th century and see who the players really are, and the true nature of the tragedy.

Movie Critic Over all a slick production about things almost no one has any knowledge about any more. I knew about the Archduke being assassinated in Sarajevo but no details... did not know the invasion of Serbia was the casus belli of WWI. The film was a tad heavy on the digital enhancement side but not too bad.I have several pet peeves with the story. The hero is Jew turned Christian DA type who is charged with investigating the Archduke's assassination. There was the dose of ugly anti-semitism.... is there nothing that can be produced with out this particular moral lesson? It dilutes the story line...which is a tad melodramatic and unbelievable anyway. To wit=The real cause for the Austro-Hungarian interest in Serbia was a cabal of greedy capitalists who wanted a railroad from Berlin to Baghdad that had to go through Serbia...sort of like the Keystone Pipeline idea. This lefty fodder is simply not likely as Baghdad in 1914 would have had all the economic interest of dry camel dung. Oil was not discovered until 1927. Also Serbia had been involved in numerous Balkan wars trying to enlarge its territory and was anti Austro-Hungarian pro Russian from 1903 on... it was anything but an innocent bystander. So it is a historical ignorant plot.Then there is the yuppie love angle...beautiful Serbian suffragette heiress (married no less) is the romantic interest of the Jewish DA.Wash out the PC stuff and get a more historically accurate motive and it would have been dramatically better.

Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "Sarajevo" is an Austrian/Czech co-production from 2014 that deals with a crucial event on its 100th anniversary. It is a 95-minute movie in the German language that came out the very same year that director Prochaska and writer Ambrosch made the pretty well-known western movie "Das finstere Tal". But back to this one here: It is a small screen release and the title already gives away that there is a historic context to it because Sarajevo is of course the place where it all started over a century ago in terms of World War I. On a completely unrelated note, recently, the film got a bit of a boost because it got picked up on Netflix. And this movie once again confirmed for me that I have much more interest in World War II than World War I. The problem wasn't at all here that there was no war action, but it dealt a lot more with the interrogations of the people responsible for the shooting of the Austrian heir to the throne. The cast includes a handful names that German film buffs will probably recognize, such as Heino Ferch, Edin Hasanovic and Erwin Steinhauer perhaps too. The film is very sterile and bleak and it's probably not that great for younger audiences because I did not feel it delivered too much in the historic context and there are relatively cruel references, not just about the assassination, but also about executions. So yeah, all in all, the film's dialogues were not good enough for me personally to work as a mostly dialogue-driven film for almost 100 minutes. I personally give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.