I finished watching this movie 20 minutes ago with my family. It was the first time it was broadcast on cable, and since the network it aired on is generally in favour of our current government, I don't doubt that the rating of this movie will get a boost in the coming days.
I am, of course, running under the assumption that no one is watching this movie with any sort of a critical eye, because objectively, no matter where you lie on the political spectrum, this movie is among the most bafflingly awful I've seen in quite some time.
The story has absolutely zero through-line to speak of in the first half. A majority of our time was spent figuring out who each character even is and how they are relevant to the story. The shots seem to randomly switch from a pub to a boardroom to the main character's home with no rhyme or reason. No character is given a proper introduction; without prior knowledge, you wouldn't have been able to tell that the wife of the Prime Minister, who is supposed to be the main antagonist (I think...?), is in fact the wife of the Prime Minister. I had to point that out to one of my fellow viewers. Her appearance didn't help matters, it does not resemble Klára Dobrev in the slightest.
So we have characters we can't identify, in a story where we struggle to identify the main storyline until it emerges about an hour in. And even that storyline's resolution is contrived as all hell.
The main character's boyfriend just flat-out disappears in the middle of the movie, with material about the wrongdoings of the government which he wishes to leak to German news outlets, then at the end reappears as a deus ex machina, and reveals he has been bribed as a last-ditch effort to make sure the MC doesn't have a chance to reveal her findings to the public. How he was bribed and was caught is never given a thought.
Actually, lots of things are not given even the most miniscule of thoughts.
The main character manages to hide in the men's bathroom stall in the Parliament after placing a dictaphone in one of the boardrooms, and stays in the stall until dark without anyone needing to use the single stall with a toilet, because reasons.
After getting out, and collecting the dictaphone, the wife of the Prime Minister, who realistically has no reason to still be there, just happens to open the boardroom door one last time at night when the main character is coincidentally still there, because reasons.
The only thing that makes even remote sense during this movie's events is a 15-20 minute monologue (at least it sure felt that long), given to the main character by her boss, in which he explains, using an analogy a child could understand, how the government at the time got into power. This monologue takes the principal rule of moviemaking, "Show, don't tell", and throws it into a trash compactor and then into an incinerator.
And it's painful, because honestly, the scheme described during this monologue, and the House of Cards-esque manner in which the Prime Minister reformed the governing party and narrowly won the election, would have made for a story that's orders of magnitude more interesting, full of potential intrigue and more capable of serving this film's blatant goal of being propaganda for the current Hungarian government.
And instead of that story, which the scriptwriters and director were clearly aware of, we get this mishmash of random scenes and dialogue which fails to coalesce into anything comprehensible until the halfway point, at which point it decides to hammer you over with its message with a police-grade rubber baton.
This movie is worthless to anyone voting for any given party, because nothing said here is anyting they haven't heard of already.
It's worthless to those on the fence because it fails to make convincing arguments.
It's worthless to anyone who's not Hungarian because it's bad at explaining the political history of the country, save for the monologue I mentioned above which no sane person would listen to the whole way through without yawning.
And more importantly, it's worthless to anyone with even a remote interest in watching good movies, because it's an absolutely awful movie.
Avoid like the plague.
I am, of course, running under the assumption that no one is watching this movie with any sort of a critical eye, because objectively, no matter where you lie on the political spectrum, this movie is among the most bafflingly awful I've seen in quite some time.
The story has absolutely zero through-line to speak of in the first half. A majority of our time was spent figuring out who each character even is and how they are relevant to the story. The shots seem to randomly switch from a pub to a boardroom to the main character's home with no rhyme or reason. No character is given a proper introduction; without prior knowledge, you wouldn't have been able to tell that the wife of the Prime Minister, who is supposed to be the main antagonist (I think...?), is in fact the wife of the Prime Minister. I had to point that out to one of my fellow viewers. Her appearance didn't help matters, it does not resemble Klára Dobrev in the slightest.
So we have characters we can't identify, in a story where we struggle to identify the main storyline until it emerges about an hour in. And even that storyline's resolution is contrived as all hell.
The main character's boyfriend just flat-out disappears in the middle of the movie, with material about the wrongdoings of the government which he wishes to leak to German news outlets, then at the end reappears as a deus ex machina, and reveals he has been bribed as a last-ditch effort to make sure the MC doesn't have a chance to reveal her findings to the public. How he was bribed and was caught is never given a thought.
Actually, lots of things are not given even the most miniscule of thoughts.
The main character manages to hide in the men's bathroom stall in the Parliament after placing a dictaphone in one of the boardrooms, and stays in the stall until dark without anyone needing to use the single stall with a toilet, because reasons.
After getting out, and collecting the dictaphone, the wife of the Prime Minister, who realistically has no reason to still be there, just happens to open the boardroom door one last time at night when the main character is coincidentally still there, because reasons.
The only thing that makes even remote sense during this movie's events is a 15-20 minute monologue (at least it sure felt that long), given to the main character by her boss, in which he explains, using an analogy a child could understand, how the government at the time got into power. This monologue takes the principal rule of moviemaking, "Show, don't tell", and throws it into a trash compactor and then into an incinerator.
And it's painful, because honestly, the scheme described during this monologue, and the House of Cards-esque manner in which the Prime Minister reformed the governing party and narrowly won the election, would have made for a story that's orders of magnitude more interesting, full of potential intrigue and more capable of serving this film's blatant goal of being propaganda for the current Hungarian government.
And instead of that story, which the scriptwriters and director were clearly aware of, we get this mishmash of random scenes and dialogue which fails to coalesce into anything comprehensible until the halfway point, at which point it decides to hammer you over with its message with a police-grade rubber baton.
This movie is worthless to anyone voting for any given party, because nothing said here is anyting they haven't heard of already.
It's worthless to those on the fence because it fails to make convincing arguments.
It's worthless to anyone who's not Hungarian because it's bad at explaining the political history of the country, save for the monologue I mentioned above which no sane person would listen to the whole way through without yawning.
And more importantly, it's worthless to anyone with even a remote interest in watching good movies, because it's an absolutely awful movie.
Avoid like the plague.