What appears a routine conspiracy thriller fleshed out with contemporary hooks about body shaming, victim shaming and the dark web suddenly explodes in the third act as consequence gets personal. If you’re of an arthouse bent you’ll equate Polish cinema with Andrzej Wadja (Man of Marble, 1977), Roman Polanski (Knife in the Water, 1962), Jerzy Kawalerowicz (Pharaoh, 1966) Krysztof Kieslowski (Three Colours Trilogy, 1993-1994) or Pawel Pawlikowski (Ida, 2013) and you’ve probably turned a blind eye to the boom in commercial Polish cinema of recent years, mostly concentrating on corrupt cops, gangsters, the Mafia, and strong-minded women.
Luckily, my local multiplex, which lacks arthouse inclination, has been running the biggest hits from Poland on a regular basis. The latest arrival lacks the bombast and outlandish narrative of previous entries and while following a standard investigative narrative eventually twists into a more personal reflection on crime.
Journalist Julita (Magdalena Kolesnik) investigating the suicide of well-known television presenter Gustaw (Mariusz Czajka) finds evidence of a murder plot. After publishing her story, she becomes an even bigger story when her sex video is made public. Her outraged editor demands she apologise for embarrassing the news website. When she refuses, she is fired. Widowed father Henryk (Andrzej Sweeryn) – wife committed suicide way back – disowns her, older sister Magda (Wiktoria Gordecka) chucks her out of her flat.
The journalist ploughs on, but hunting down her own hacker puts her back on target to uncover a man who could conceivably possess the computing skills – that once upon a time could have only existed in the fictional James Bond/Fast and Furious universe but now with the driverless car upon us less a figment of the imagination – to force the television presenter’s vehicle over a bridge. She’s more determined than resourceful, tempting a security guard out of his office by setting off a smoke alarm, escaping from another security guard by ramming his hands with a car door.
She is assisted by Chinese chef Emil (Piotr Trojan), a part-time computer whiz, whose Army background makes him a suspect. Eventually, with more digging and a good deal of luck, she finds the hacker. Instead of turning him in, she agrees to give him a stay of execution.
For why? He has evidence Gustaw was part of a child sex abuse ring of which the hacker was an early victim. He wants to employ more computer wizardry vigilante style to knock off another member of the abuse ring. He promises to stop after that, leaving it to Julita to make a decision on whether to go to the police.
I’m going to have to issue a spoiler otherwise this will just seem too routine a thriller. This is where it gets emotionally harrowing and spins completely on its axis, away from standard investigative journalism and into another realm entirely. The twist is that the hacker’s next victim, murdered by tampering with a dialysis machine, is her father. He was another legendary television figure. Now her mother’s suicide makes sense as does her sister’s reluctance to let her son anywhere near her grandfather.
Now what? Not enough to be the already humiliated daughter of a sex offender, but to realize the hidden role this has played in her family, and to decide whether further exposure would be in anybody’s interest.
Despite a car chase and being hounded, this doesn’t quite get to the boil in terms of conspiracy thriller as though director Piotr Adamski (Eastern, 2019) knew that the final act would blow everything that went before out of the water. But given this is the director’s sophomore outing and he didn’t want to go the all-out violence-ridden crime route, it’s tense enough and with some interesting news-room background, sniping colleagues, an editor pumping breast-milk at her desk, electronic scorecard ranking journos by the minute. Surprised, to be honest, some of the images that the censor passed.
But Magdalena Kolesnik (Sweat, 2020) plays this just right. Too self-reliant to be out of her box with fear, too independent to let her emotions get the better of her, meaning that when the big reveal hits she can dive into all that repressed emotion.
If you’ve not dipped into modern commercial Polish cinema, this is as good a place to start as any. If you’re already a fan, you’ll know what to expect, and come up somewhat shaken at how this pans out.
Worth a look.
The Magnificent 60s 