Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Loui Blair It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

David I first watched this when it aired on UK TV in the late 90s. Luckily I videoed it and have watched it many times since.While I totally agree with what other reviewers have said about omitting the complex events leading up to the war at the risk of offensively over-simplifying a complex and impassioned tinder box, we must also appreciate that a movie simply cannot be all things to all people. So while a movie about the historical and political backdrop to the war would be a very worthy undertaking, that would have to be a separate movie to this. Trying to shoe-horn all of that into this story would've been a disaster and I doubt it would ever have made it to the screen. Besides, you should never go to the movies expecting a history lesson. Even when they try to shoot a faithful real-life account, by the end of the too-many-cooks process, it ends up at best 50% accurate. That's just the nature of the beast and it's naive to expect any different.So, misplaced accuracy-based judgements aside, we have here the simple story of 2 friends whose ethnic backgrounds lands them on opposing sides of a war. The very thing that cemented their friendship - their skill as target shooters - becomes a curse as they find themselves inevitably recruited as snipers on the front lines. Justification for the war and personal well-being wrestles with loyalty to old friends.I found the interaction between the 2 central characters very touching and credible. It sets the scene nicely for the nightmare scenario they're confronted with later in the story.The zeitgeist conjured up both pre and post conflict work very well for me, though of course I cannot comment on how accurate a reflection of reality this is - it just comes pretty close to what I imagine and what footage I saw of Yugoslavia during this time.They did a good job of depicting civilian normality suddenly violated by some sacrilegious military intrusion, whether it be an exploding shell in the night or a sniper's round to an old lady fetching water. As well as illustrating the insidious and deliberate intent to terrorise innocent civilians in order to break the will of their leaders, I think this sudden and violent change in mood is as much as you can do to describe the start of a conflict like that on screen.Linus Roache and Vincent Perez were great in the lead roles, along with strong support from the doctor, wives, and girlfriend. The locations were extremely well-picked out. I appreciate some of it was actually shot in Sarajevo - a bold move only 5 years after the events depicted.I guess my sole criticism would be the apparent ease with which Slavko seemed to transform from warm-hearted friend of the family into a cold killing machine. It just seemed a little devoid of soul-searching or intense emotions I'd expect to see a man go through faced with that kind of dilemma. That said, I've never been in that situation so perhaps I am naive - perhaps that's roughly what would happen in a situation like that where the only way one could proceed is to over-compensate and brutally reject what came before. So the jury's out on that one.Other than that nit-picking, I thought this very sensitive subject was handled with the appropriate amount of respect while still telling the gripping dramatic story at its core. Furthermore, it manages to make some very striking points about what's so unacceptably wrong about warfare inflicted upon a civilian population, whatever the perceived justification may be.The central story is an unusual and intriguing one in its own right which is justification enough to bring this to the screen. Transcending that though, I think this film helped shock a largely ignorant UK audience into re-educating themselves a little more about a conflict they never really understood in the first place.

dunsuls-1 There was a civil war in the US 150 years ago,no one truly remembers it.There is the terror of sniper combat so well displayed in the film"Enemy at the gates"that was reviewed on my blog,but it was uniformed soldiers.We begin to understand sectarian violence from Iraq and Afghanistan BUT in a white European country,in our own lifetime,before 9/11 changed our focus on everything?No I doubt anyone truly understood it or does to this day,but since WW11 the first war crimes trials were held because of it. The country of Yugoslavia,was a patch work of forced uniting of diverse Balkan peoples of different ethic and religious backgrounds that fell apart when the strongman holding it together,Marshal Tito,died. Its capital city was Sarajevo,home to a Winter Olympics Game in the recent past,and a shinning example to the world that a different sort of new kind of capitalism/socialism,much like what China IS succeeding with today,could work in Europe. Tito's death changed everything to again remind us all that old hate and grudges lie just below the surface and rise like puss from a wound and fester to infect and kill us all. This film doesn't shed much new light how that came to pass in what was Yugoslavia,but it does focus a narrow light on what people living a very similar life as we in the US live,can fall into when "wounds"are not treated and how fragile our life styles really can be. In a sense this is very personnel human horror story without zombies.HBO films made another film worthy of all our attention to understand what modern war in cities and sectarian violence can be right here if we are not smart and allow ourselves to let the mess our country is in continue.The families and people in this film are like us.Middle class,educated and see their lifes decent into a living and in many cases dying hell. Congress and the President should see this picture ,as a teachable moment,before they forget how fractured our own country has truly become.Like most docudramas the story is a copulation of many events to give a picture of a event that is not rational but that did happen.

Yazi 'Shot through the heart' turned up on HBO while I was bored killing time in a hotel. The title initially put me off - I nearly went to the gym instead. But when I realized from the initial Cranberries track that it wasn't going to be the usual made for HBO slushy American trash, I started watching. A powerful movie, not the usual war film, it explored the added horrors of a civil war with friends pitted against friends. The scene where the main character, a Moslem realiszes that it is former best friend and Olympic shooting hopeful, a Serb who is the sniper accounting for a lot of the civilian deaths in his neighborhood brings this home. I like a previous reviewer was involved in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia and the gritty low-budget 'almost documentary' style gives this film an edge over other war films which usually fail to achieve such authenticity.

WinterRain0205 This is one fantastic movie. It really gets to you. Superb acting, dialogue. All too natural scenes.You would expect a high-adrenalin duel between the two sharpshooter, like in 'Enemy at the Gates', and when the events unfold in a different way you would start to think, 'Yeah, that's perfect'. And you would realize that had the final confrontation turned into a John Woo-ish 45-minute-long-butt-kicking nonsense, it would have spoiled the movie.