Reviews
Piktuju Karta (2021)
What a pleasant surprise
The first time I saw the trailer of this movie, I thought it would be a snooze fest. Can't thank enough the friend who convinced me to go. The actual movie was a very pleasant surprise.
The thing I appreciated the most was a genuinely good plot. It keeps the suspense till the very last scenes of the movie. Besides being a proper thriller, it encompasses a Lithuanian, or rather a post-soviet, problem of the identities of KGB agents being kept a secret. So the story revolves around ex-KGB guys carrying on with their good lives and staying in power due to a strong network of people, who help each other out to keep their secrets hidden. But it's not only the ex-agents who are self-serving. The potential whistle-blower in the 90s had a chance to expose them, but didn't leak the files because she wasn't paid enough. The newsroom editor is an informant who tells the KGB who has the stolen files before they can go public. So, in this regard, it really shows a generation of evil, when a lot of people who could have done the right thing didn't do it, because it didn't serve their own interests. I think this aspect of the plot is very clever.
It's a thriller, so obviously there's murder. I personally hate the gruesome images of dead bodies, so I was not looking forward to those scenes. However, the murders were really inventive. I don't want to spoil it, but the way people got murdered, really helps to unravel the story. Even death comedy is on point.
The last thing I liked was the reference to the current Lithuanian small town politics, because the place and the blond female mayor must be based on a town 50 km from Vilnius.
The annoying things were the character of the daughter, who was overly dramatic and not believable, but she didn't deserve that prolonged violent scene. That was extra.
All in all, after seeing this, I told my friends and family to go see it for themselves. It's worth it. It's actually a good enough movie for international audiences too. I see it has been making some rounds in the UK, where there is a big Lithuanian expat community, but the movie should be interesting even to those who have no idea where Lithuania is on a map.