BIG BAD WOLVES (2013 - Hebrew)

Studio:       Magnet Releasing
Director:    Aharon Keshales, Navot Papushado
Writer:       Aharon Keshales, Navot Papushado
Producer:  Chilik Michaeli, Avraham Pirchi, Tami Leon, Moshe Edery, Leon Edery
Stars:     Tzahi Grad, Lior Ashkenazi, Rotem Keinan, Dov Glickman

Review Score:

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Summary:

A grieving father of a murdered child, the prime suspect in the crime, and a detective investigating the case cross paths as the mystery connecting them unfolds.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Young Michaela goes missing during a game of hide and seek. Dror, a schoolteacher and the primary suspect in Michaela’s disappearance, is beaten by police detective Micki and two other officers before fellow detective Rami intervenes. A boy secretly records the violent interrogation on his cell phone. After Dror is released, the police later discover Michaela’s headless body in the woods.

Captain Tsvika removes Micki from the case and disciplines him when the beating video goes viral. Dror loses his job at the school because of the accusations. Micki begins tailing Dror on his personal time.

Michaela’s father Gidi purchases a remote cabin in the woods with a soundproof basement. While watching a little girl’s ballet class, Dror calls his ex-wife and asks to visit their daughter for her birthday, but she refuses. Captain Tsvika hints that he is okay with Micki going around the department to coerce a confession from Dror. Gidi prepares his basement for a prisoner. Dror presents a birthday cake to the ballet girl.

Micki chases Dror, kidnaps him, and forces Dror to dig a hole in the ground as a scare tactic. Acting on his own plan to interrogate Dror, Gidi knocks Micki unconscious before kidnapping both men.

Micki wakes in Gidi’s cabin. Gidi convinces Micki to help him torture a confession out of Dror, who is restrained to a chair in the basement. As both men torture him by breaking fingers and tearing off toenails, Dror continues professing his innocence. While Gidi prepares a cake laced with sedatives like the killer used on his victims, Dror appeals to Micki as a father and earns some sympathy. Gidi ends up taking Micki hostage as well.

The interrogation is interrupted by Gidi’s father Yoram. When Yoram stumbles onto the scene in the basement, Gidi drops a jar of nails and Micki hides one under his foot. Yoram elects to participate by torturing Dror with a blowtorch.

As part of a plan made with Micki to buy the two captives some time, Dror gives Gidi and Yoram a false location for where Michaela’s head is buried. Gidi leaves to retrieve the head. While guarding the two men, Yoram eats the sedative-laced cake and passes out. Micki uses the opportunity to pick his handcuffs with the nail, but he stops short of freeing Dror as he still thinks the man is guilty.

Micki flees into the night and borrows a cell phone from a man on horseback. Micki learns from his wife that their daughter was kidnapped from ballet class and he races back to the cabin to question Dror about her whereabouts. Having found nothing at the location Dror gave, Gidi returns to the cabin and begins to saw off Dror’s head while Yoram watches. Micki arrives and futilely tries to stop the blood loss from Dror’s neck. He pleads with Dror to tell him where his daughter is, but Dror only smiles before dropping dead.

Rami phones the police captain from Dror’s house to report that a search did not turn up any evidence. The camera dollies to an adjacent room and shows Micki’s daughter in her ballerina outfit lying dead behind a false wall.

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Review:

A young girl’s headless body is discovered in the woods.  A schoolteacher accused of the crime repeatedly professes his innocence.  A grieving father craves vengeance.  And a loose cannon cop goes outside the lines to bring his target to justice.  Sounds like the cable guide summary to any average rerun of “Criminal Minds” or “Law and Order: Criminal Intent.”  Under a less focused vision, “Big Bad Wolves” could have settled for being similarly disposable entertainment.  But filmmakers Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado slide so much casual intensity into such simple concepts that their film transcends the tropes and transforms into a wickedly stylish thriller.

The kidnapping kickstart plays out under opening credits before skipping to a point in the timeline when the investigation has been botched, the prime suspect has been released, and the police have resorted to less than official methods of extorting a confession from their target.  Being dropped at the midpoint puts the audience in a starting spot where all lines are blurred and grey is the only color shading each person.

The directors double down on a confident choice to cast the viewer as an impartial spectator capable of determining his/her own feelings about the trauma that transpires.  Details about the crime, the case, and the characters come without a predetermined morality.  There is no perspective pushed forth about who is guilty, who may be in the wrong, or who should be viewed as hero or villain.  That setup keeps the film from becoming a routine police procedural crime thriller and allows individual scenes to create drama through uncertain emotions.

Top suspect Dror looks the part of a homicidal pedophile.  Hair receding into wayward curls.  Lenscrafter eyeglasses matched with department store sweater vests.  And a simultaneous nervousness mingled with strange self-assuredness covers him in the perfect amount of is he or isn’t he doubt.  His initial torture elicits vengeful cheers until bloodlust turns into sympathy.  The pain goes too far and doubt shifts to the interrogators.  There is a constant seesaw of unbalanced allegiances.  “Big Bad Wolves” is a textbook example of how conflict creates tension, and that conflict is a war waged inside the viewer, the absolute best place any filmmaker can put it.

Since debuting on the festival circuit, the enormous praise heaped upon “Big Bad Wolves” has rightly focused on creators Keshales and Papushado as well as their titanium chain of a cast where every actor is a strong link.  But director of photography Giora Bejach must also be singled out for exceptionally sharp cinematography that casts one of the film’s strongest spells.  Lush landscapes and snow-dusted mountainsides draw easy attention to themselves in movies with naturally beautiful settings.  Bejach has only drab interiors and nondescript woodlands to work with, yet finds creative ways to make ordinary visuals match the mood.

The camera moves often, and there are times when an obsession with forward and backward dollies along with an overuse of slow motion cuts close to being too noticeably fluid.  But the camera-motivated theatrics are rarely so arty that they do not fit the film, which by nature of the title, is intended to have a slight fairy tale fantasy tone.

Where that tone drifts is in comedic touches.  Levity is welcome when toenail rippings, finger snappings, and blowtorch burnings make up a heavy bevy of onscreen proceedings.  Yet the emphatic turn into intentional chuckles two-thirds of the way in cheapens some of the impact and starts fraying edges on an otherwise tightly wound spool.  The smirking shift also paves a path with caramel gravel.  “Big Bad Wolves” starts sticking in place when it lingers too long in several back half distractions.  The momentum is never completely undone, but the break in rhythm does introduce unneeded choppiness.

With a revenge drama core exploded from a theme of torture, “Big Bad Wolves” finds ways to walk a careful line by avoiding exploitation and exhibiting control.  Less thoughtful efforts would be more graphic with the violence, and might opt to depict the murdered child centerpiece as a bloodied corpse without its head.  “Big Bad Wolves” puts the camera elsewhere.  Showing a trail of gummy worms ending in pulled down panties is less direct, yet more psychologically effective at evoking horror in as demure a manner as is cinematically possible.

The movie demonstrates restraint when needed, humor when wanted, and stunning imagery constantly.  Above all, it delivers gripping action, divisive personalities, and memorable setpieces.  To put it another way, “Big Bad Wolves” is everything new age noir should be.

Review Score:  80

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