Winter Flies (2018) User Reviews

Partially Effective

[larrys3 · 6/10 · 24 February 2020]

Twelve-year-old Hedus (Jan Frantisek Uher) and fourteen-year -old Mara (Tomas Mrvik) embark on a road trip across the Czech Republic in a stolen Audi. Seemingly coming from neglectful homes, they'll be faced with plenty of adventures and misadventures along the way.

We quickly learn that this tale is being told in flashbacks, as Mara is relaying it to the police in flashbacks. Thus, the film will continually switch back and forth to past and present.

The humor here can be quite crude and even shocking at times. I will differ from most of the pro critics that I've read, in that I only found some of the outrageous comedy was truly effective, while the rest just didn't register with me as being so, even falling into mean-spiritedness with an underlying sadness.

Overall, the film, directed by Olmo Omerzy with a screenplay from Petr Pycha, can be an outrageous and crude road trip by two Czech boys which pulls few punches, but which I found only partially funny.

little Czech indie

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 1 April 2021]

Underaged troublemaking friends Mára and Hedus pick up hitchhiker Bára in a stolen car. Hedus literally grabs her off the road and keeps discussing having sex with her. He also pretends to shoot people with his toy gun. Meanwhile in a flashforward, Mára is being interrogated by the police about a death and the car.

This is a Czech indie. The boys are crass. They are interesting. I wish the girl has more to say. Her character is potentially a great foil but the boys hog all the lines. It's a little quirky but not that funny. It's a road trip movie. This is good although there is better potential.

Sly, subtle, quietly triumphant

[dloft59 · 8/10 · 25 March 2019]

Mára, a sullen, shaven-headed 15-year-old, is running away from home at the wheel of a stolen Audi. He's barely hit the road before a chubby, hulking acquaintance named Hedus, dressed in shaggy camo and carrying an intimidating automatic weapon that turns out to be only a pellet gun, wheedles him into letting him go along.

Mára is verbally cynical and detached, Hedus constantly employs foul language to speculate about and plan sexual exploits that are obviously beyond his dorky ken. They pick up an attractive older hitchhiker who's ditching an abusive boyfriend, and the story pops in on a police interrogation that evidently occurs much later (so we know the boys haven't gotten killed or maimed, and don't appear to have trashed the car). This sets up a mysterious destination for the interim events we have yet to witness.

Ostensibly a buddy or road picture, "Winter Flies" keeps you guessing. You never know what's going to happen from one minute to the next, although a series of familiar tropes parade through the plot, for example: the unlikely, squabbling pair who come to respect each other ... the clumsy loser who manages a startling act of imaginative heroics ... the hard-talking teen who fails to hide his compassionate heart or prevent a skilled inquisitor from penetrating to his vulnerable center.

And though some dark and dire moments -- a near rape, a man tries to drown a dog -- and much adult misbehavior and neglect are shown or implied, the film never turns truly ugly OR sentimental in relating its drab, low-key, yet often very funny tale of small miracles.

The story is related in a mostly cool, realistic fashion, but there's at least one puzzling sequence that prompted a voice in the row behind me to murmur "magical realism," as if slapping a label on it would even begin to explain why the filmmakers chose to include it in this picture. A better strategy -- with this and all other artistic experiences -- is to let the confusion and discomfort sit with you. Maybe an answer will come later, maybe not; but it's okay not to have everything nailed down, folks.