“A lonely tough guy, his faithful dog, a mysterious beauty and dozens of corpses, i.e. a full-blooded story about revenge, love and death. An action film fueled by pure adrenaline, made in close cooperation with veterans of the GROM military unit” – we read in the promotional materials “Devil”. It sounds great and it should have been in the trailer with a voice-over from the era of action movies on the shelves of VHS rental stores. “One Man Against the Whole World”. Eryk Lubos is…THE DEVIL! Can you hear it in your mind? I do! After all, I grew up on the films of Jean Claude Van Damme’ai Sly’and Stallone. John Rambo in the Polish edition is something I’m always waiting for from magical gadgets. I honestly hoped that the film based on the novel by Robert Ziębiński (who, by the way, has a great feel for genre cinema) would be just this type of story. Lubos with a gun and a dog vs provincial gangsters? What’s not to like here?! Well…
Former GROM Max soldier (Eric Lubos) lives in a remote area with his beautiful Belgian Shepherd. The army was his whole life and he found it difficult to cope in a world without war lurking around every corner. His only link with the outside world remains the former commando Swan (Aleksandra Popławska), which now operates in the private sector. He’s just a mercenary. It is she who brings him the news of his father’s death, which forces Max to abandon his microcosm, cut off from the world. Max was supposed to visit his native Tarnowskie Góry only for a moment, but it turns out that there are more and more secrets surrounding the death in the family, which Max is helped to explain by his father’s friend Dworski (Krzysztof Stroiński).
We are in the male world of the archetypal silent commando, so the beautiful and smart Kaja quickly appears next to Maks (Paulina Gałązka). The local gangs from Tarnowskie Góry obviously haven’t watched the first Rambo and don’t know that the enraged commando is… a killer commando. Additionally, this one’s nickname is Devil.
This plot is perfect for a Reagan-era action movie. Of course, we are in the 21st century and today action cinema has the face of the death ballets of Chad Stahelski (“John Wick”) and is turning in a very feminist direction. It is not easy to combine this eclecticism.
Nevertheless, the icon of action cinema in the testosterone-filled 1980s, Sylvester Stallone was able to combine the tough guys of that specific period with today’s sensitivity in the “Expendables” series. Director Błażej Jankowiak making his debut in a feature-length feature he’s not “Sylwek” and I don’t expect that from him at all. The problem is that Jankowiak cannot decide what film he is making.
Is it a typical action movie with murders, shootings, explosions and heavy-handed characters suitable for this type of entertainment, or does “The Devil” have something important to tell us about the problems of veterans with post-traumatic stress syndrome?
Eryk Lubos has played a rugged, tough guy many times before, so here he is “on autopilot”. I have no problem with that. Action movies are supposed to be based on the charisma of the main star, and I didn’t expect Lubos to be anything other than a wild fighter with a face similar to Belmondo’s. The actor already played a similar role in “To Kill a Beaver” (2012) by Jan Jakub Kolski, where he also played the role of an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran suffering from PTSD, who was hiding somewhere on the sidelines. In Kolski’s mannered film, he suffered in the arms of a teenage girl. Here he suffers in the arms of a slightly older girl. But what is this suffering for?
If the entire film is made up of exaggerated gangsters (Karol Biernacki as Zimny, with his albino appearance, even looks like someone from a very cold land), the plot solutions are taken from a simple action movie and the main villain has a face like Senator Trent from “Death Winner” in the end. with Steven Seagal, why the hell do I need a board at the end with information about the number of soldiers with PTSD left to fend for themselves?
So this whole “Devil” is serious cinema? Is he supposed to sensitize me to the fact that veteran commandos are a walking ticking bomb and do not have appropriate psychological help? Well, “The Devil” was supposed to give me the pure joy of watching a revenge movie, where villains meet their nemesis. I’m supposed to be rooting for the madness of Maks and his shepherd dog, attacking the crotches of the thugs from Tarnowskie Góry. I should also be happy that Popławska and her commandos came to help Lubos and caused a riot in the city. But then the creators want me to reflect on veteran violence. Seriously? But shouldn’t Lubos and Popławska shoot so much? OK, Rambo also cried in the finale of Ted Kotcheff’s First Blood. However, this thread was consistently pursued there. “The Devil”, on the other hand, looks like “Rambo III”, where the speculations about the mental problems of soldiers were buried in sand in Afghanistan, and in the finale it returns to the first Rambo based on the book by David Morrell.
Someone wrote that “The Devil” is a combination of “John Wick” and Pasikowski’s cinema. I have the impression that the filmmakers wanted to make this connection. However, this cannot be done. Either we have fun with action cinema, not forgetting about self-irony and genre self-awareness, or we do it seriously, like Władysław Pasikowskinot even in the brilliant “Dogs”, but in the times of “Operation Samun”.
Maciej Pieprzyca recently showed that action cinema with good scenes is possible in Poland. On Netflix “Go ahead brother” However, a decision was made for narrative consistency, in which Piotr Witkowski, who for some time has been created by Netflix as the Polish Van Damme, finally found his place.’a. Except that Pieprzyca is a great craftsman who knows what he wants.
In “The Devil”, the cauldron of incompatible action movie elements is turned up too high. Because no one knows whether we should support or pity the Devil.
5/10