The movie starts with Belgrade's anti-Milosevic October revolution in 2000. From the opening credits and unforgettable images of an uprising nation this is a classic movie in every single sense. The introduction of Luka a strange taxi-driver knocking people on streets and refusing passengers is hilarious from the start, but when he meets his long following target the roles are changed. Teja (Branislav Lecic) an university professor, bohemic writer, a member of Belgrade's intellectual circles and a passionate opponent of the Milosevic's regime is a manager in a big publishing house. The workers are far from happy and a strike looks very likely to happen. One day a strange visitor comes uninvited to his office carrying a big suitcase. That man is an above mentioned Luka, a former agent of Serbian Security Forces, now just an ordinary taxi driver. This is just the beginning of an amazing and most unlikely encounter. Slowly as we get to know Luka his mission was to daily shadow Teja during the last ten years, to write reports on his behavior and acts, to watch on him an follow him on even most intimate moments of his life. Step by step the last ten years of their lives are appearing, the lives of these two men with quite opposite destinies. The editing of documentary footage with live action is impressive and the almost "Forest Gump" appearances of TEJA in many of the country's memorable historic moments are raising Goosebumps. It works on many parallel levels, like a comedy, like a social drama, or just like a documentary on the dark years of one nation. Bora Todorovic is effortlessly brilliant in a role which was portrayed by late Danilo Bata Stojkovic so many times on the theater stage, and is possibly the only right substitute for this great actor. The producers together with the research team had done an unprecedented job concerning Yugoslavian cinematography maximizing all the documentary archives and the clever usage of locations an every single effort is highly rewarded. From the most unexpected situations, after the slow introduction, sometimes irresistibly comic, to the most tragic events and dark hidden war stories, rises the chronicle of one period in time. It's a history of a struggle for freedom of one nation at the end of the 20th century with a personal recognizable comic touch by Dusan Kovacevic.
Review of The Professional
