Gidi (Tzahi Grad), an Israeli man sitting in a rocking chair, rolling a cigarette, hears a rustling in the trees just off his deck. He looks and an Arab villager on horseback comes trotting from behind the trees at a leisurely pace and asks if Gidi would mind rolling him a cigarette as well. The man is a stranger to Gidi, but he insists he take his, lights it for him and two puffs later the villager hands it back. “That’s all?” Gidi asks. “Just one drag, my wife doesn’t let me,” he says before going on his way.
Meanwhile, in the basement beneath Gidi’s otherwise secluded cabin in the woods sits Dror (Rotem Keinan), a religious studies teacher who finds himself gagged and bound to a chair. His hand is broken and his toenails have been ripped off by the kindly gentleman who just shared his cigarette. Gidi believes Dror murdered his daughter and while he exacts his revenge in hopes of learning where his dead daughter’s head is, Dror is going to have to endure some pain until he confesses.
That said, only a random statement from someone claiming to have seen Dror fleeing the scene is the only evidence the police have. His guilt, therefore, is yet to be decided. Now tell me, who’s the villain in this scenario?
Thus is Big Bad Wolves, an Israeli film brought to the attention of most when Quentin Tarantino declared it the best film of 2013. While I’d say Tarantino is dramatically overstating the film’s quality, I can see where he would find some measure of personal gratification, especially the lengthy torture scene in Reservoir Dogs.
Writer/directors Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado lean heavily on a similar storytelling style Tarantino has come to employ in a tension-to-joke-to-darkness form of narrative such as, “I’m going to smash your hand with a hammer” to “Hold that thought, my mom is calling” and “Oh, don’t I have the cutest ring tone for being such a violent man?” These attempts at “comedy” didn’t really work for me though I did find the overall feature tremendously successful in keeping tensions high. For the most part, this is a terribly dark feature, successfully playing with our emotions as the “did he do it?” scenario plays out.
While I could have done without the cutesy scenes of mom calling and cake baking to the tune of Buddy Holly’s “Everyday” (I guess it could have been worse, it could have been “Stuck in the Middle With You“), I was also disappointed in the film’s ending, largely because the premise is built on police buffoonery and it doesn’t let up, even in the final frame when in fact you don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to solve this crime.
The film raises enough questions without resorting to narrative silliness and it’s almost more comical to read the director’s statement where they describe it as a “comic kidnapping thriller”. I mean, we’re talking about a killer who rapes his victims, breaks their fingers, rips off their toe nails and then cuts off their heads as a souvenir. I’m going to need more than mom calling, a chicken timer and dad showing up at the wrong time to get any serious laughter here. To bring the comparison back to Tarantino, he plays his films with equal measures of absurdity and darkness, not silly little one-offs that will have you laughing quietly to yourself before a man starts bashing someone’s hand with a hammer. I believe there’s a difference, especially when the guilt or innocence of the person being tortured is in question, the comedy drains away when you’re left struggling with moral ambiguity as well.
Comedic failings aside, I don’t want to deny the film a measure of respect. The filmmaking is very impressive from the direction to Giora Bejach‘s darkly sinister cinematography to the performances from all involved. I was in their hands the whole way and only taken out of the narrative when the screenplay decided to go for some darkly comedic chuckles, as I would have preferred more of the political commentary only briefly touched upon in the scene I mentioned at the beginning of this review, which also is brought up again in the film’s third act.
While Tarantino’s endorsement draws easy comparisons to Reservoir Dogs, there are likely to be any level of comparisons made to recent torture-centered films from Prisoners to any number of “torture porn” features you can think of.
Big Bad Wolves is not to be confused with “torture porn” however, it raises questions of “How far is too far?” and questions a victim’s rights for revenge. I like that. I like those shades of grey. I like the idea of not knowing, the question of regret if you don’t follow your instinct versus the voice in your head demanding someone pay. To this film’s credit, it makes some bold decisions, there are just a few tonal issues I had a problem with that kept it from being a knockout.
