User Reviews

If it wasn't for the fact that I saw Bergman's The Seventh Seal today, I could wholeheartedly state that director Krzysztof Kieslowski's A Short film about Killing is without a doubt the best film I have seen in a long time. Originally made as part of Kieslowski's series of TV dramas Dekalog, dramatising and updating the Ten Commandments, A Short film about Killing details the bleak story of a young man, who in the heat of the moment murders a detestable taxi driver. When I say bleak, that's really an understatement, this is one of the most downbeat films ever made, with it's specially printed photography and dreary Polish locations Kieslowski makes it clear that this is not going to be an easy film to sit through, and although there is not an upbeat moment in the entire running time, we still find ourselves compelled to watch, compelled to listen to what Kieslowski is trying to say.

The first image of A Short film about Killing is, appropriately enough a dead cat. Hanging from a railing as the title is superimposed on the screen. We are then introduced to the three characters that will play the important roles in the story, the killer (Miroslaw Baka), the victim (Jan Tesarz) and the young barrister set the task of following the case when the murder reaches the court (Krzysztof Globisz). Each of these people's lives are set up simultaneously, with the use of crosscutting, sometimes their separate paths cross briefly, but never fully meeting until the end of the films first act, which climaxes with one of the most brutal murder scenes ever committed to film. With this scene, I believe that Kieslowski is showing the audience that the act of killing is not as easy as shown in Hollywood movies and daytime TV, the fact the scene goes on for as long as it does gives the viewer an idea of just how loathsome an act of murder is.

The final act of the film may not be as strong as act one, but the point of Kieslowski's argument begins to become clear. An almost unplanned act of random violence is enough for the state to put all of their time and effort into the trial and subsequent execution of the murderer. By the final act, with the killer hanging from the neck, Kieslowski's draws parallels between the dead cat from the opening credits. The point being, does this murder actually stand for anything? This is a powerful film that will linger long in your mind and with stand out performances from all concerned, especially Miroslaw Baka whose display of emotion at the climax of the story is nothing short of brilliant. Without a doubt one of the greatest films ever made. 10/10

A young unemployed man Lazar Jacek with a sad childhood drifts aimlessly about Warsaw. He hires a taxi and murders the cab-driver. He pays for the crime with his life. The atmosphere and mood of this sombre film is established early. Is the strange colouring of the film intentional? The uneven lighting of the screen is unusual, the photographic images almost over-exposed in the centre of the screen while the edges of the screen are dark, shadowy and without much colour. At times the images with a preponderance of yellow suggest pastel drawings. The action is slow and ominous giving a feeling that something is about to happen. This tends to rivet the viewer tense in his seat. What follows is abhorrent to the eye - the cruel bashing of a man to a slow and painful death. Kieslowski likes to give us the detail. He spares nothing. The attempts of the battered victim to attract passers-by is horribly exciting. Jacek's acquisition of the taxi is short-lived. He is soon in jail. The defence lawyer recently graduated and uncertain about his own future makes an unsuccessful attempt to save the young man from the gallows. A lot of this story we have seen before but not with such detailed violence. The final scene when the lawyer visits the condemned man is probably the most moving. The preparation of the noose, the oiling of the device, the placing of the tray below the trap-door hold one rapt in disgust. The message is clear: "Thou shalt not kill!!" But thinking about it we wonder how this young life might have been saved if help had been given in his early years. It seems it all started with his little sister - killed in a tractor accident on the farm when she was only twelve.

Twenty-year-old Jacek is roaming about in the grey dreariness of the Warsaw City Center. The only impulse that drives him is destructiveness, but his actions are aimless and accidental: He finds a stone on a bridge, pushes it forward so that it falls down and smashes the windscreen of one of the passing cars. He shoves a posh-looking young man into a urinal without any word of explanation. And he pulls out of his pocket that long cord and keeps fiddling around with it, until he finally commits the murder he planned: the senseless killing of a cab driver completely unknown to him, a man who just had the bad luck of taking him and not one of the other passengers who were waiting at the taxi rank.

Explanations will only follow very much later, after Jacek is sentenced to be hanged. But even in the first part of the movie the audience may find some hints which make them stop short in their condemnation of Jacek's actions. There is, for instance, the scene in the photographic shop, when he takes out an old and slightly damaged first Communion photo of a little girl and asks for an enlargement. Can you tell from a picture if a person that is on it is still alive? Such a question seems abnormal to the shop assistant. But only a little while later Jacek proves that he is perfectly capable of normal human reactions, when he merrily starts visual contact with two little girls he can see from a cafeteria.

However, we also notice the spatial distance produced by the thick window pane of the cafeteria, in which lonely Jacek consumes his piece of cake. A direct communication does no longer seem possible. He became estranged from the human beings that surround him when an awful thing happened in his life, five years ago, a fatal incident that he finally reveals to his defence counsel, just a few moments before his execution: After a booze-up he went inside a tractor, driven by a pal; there was that little girl right at the side of the road, Jacek's twelve-year-old sister; the pal failed to see her and knocked her down.

Jacek never got over this senselessly caused death of a beloved sister, and therefore this accident may be seen as the origin of Jacek's embitterment. Like a train that is derailed by an unexpected obstacle, Jacek's life got thrown off the track. The equally senseless death of the cab driver is just a logical consequence resulting from the preceding accident. And the causal chain reaction does even go further. For Jacek's death by hanging in the end is nothing more than a consistent continuation of a disastrous move of fate committed at some point of the past.

"Never since Cain has any punishment Improved or deterred the world from crimes"

That is the lawyer's final answer in his final exam. While he was celebrating his success, the killer, whose counsel he would later become, was on the way. There were many chances for him and his victim to change the fate, but they denied singly. From the beginning when the taxi-driver open the glass door, on which mapped the city's brown imperturbable face, all the things happened afterwards seemed lead to the inevasible end confirmedly. Just like all the things we entitle accident in our lives.

The sky above the city reveals a disconcerting light, the camera perfectly captured the distance that blocked off the young man and the crowd. Sometimes when he was wondering where to go, the screen was eerie half bright and half dark. Of course he could only choose the destined one. The killing itself took a long long time and was really horrible, although narrated in Kieslowski's self-possessed voice. During the long time when Yazec tried, even struggled to achieve the driver's death, he was horrified by any words the dying driver moaned and struggled to be crueler to end it, and I was horrified by the dark side of humanity and tried to escape from the glum face of fate.

The fifth commandment is "You shall not kill". In the real world it becomes "You shall not kill without proper reason". But, who has the right to judge it? The lawyer lost his faith in his job, finally he found out the problem was not "how to be justice", but "to whom justice could be possible". And the last one is about ethic, the reverse of laws.

Yazec's killing was unreasonable, even Kieslowski himself said that he didn't know why Yazec wanted to kill the driver. But is the killing of Yazec reasonable? Kieslowski recorded every detail in the last killing, including the long preparing. The calmer the law officer was, the more doubtful I am. It became more and more obvious that this rite itself is a bigger crime. During this long course, every audience was put into the puzzledom of ethic. Kieslowski gave us a compassionate last shoot, that the lawyer stopped at a rural lawn, perhaps where the seed of Yazec's crime was sowed (where his sister died in an accident), and cried. But the question is still unanswered. When the audiences walk out of the cinema they are more sensitivity to the predicament of ethic of our time. I think that was what this great ideologist and filmmaker aiming for.

This is easily one of the finest films ever made - a searing social indictment against murder in all it's forms and the justification of a crime on the basis of human emotion, without cloying sentimentality or the reliance of stereotypes, which clearly demonstrates Kieslowski's firm understanding of cinematic storytelling concerns, juxtaposed with certain elements germane to the human-issues documentary movement that was popular in Europe in the mid-1970's. This film would be an important step within Kieslowski's cinematic works, in so much as it would represent the beginning of phase-two of the filmmaker's fascinating career (as well as giving him a much needed degree of international success that would allow him to progress on to those other life changing works, The Double Life of Veronique and The Three Colours Trilogy). This film can be seen as a stepping-stone to those projects, as the director effortlessly moves away from the more rigid socio-political aspects of his early documentaries and feature films (like Camera Buff), and more towards a cinema free of those realist limitations or clichés, with ideas of chance and emotion really taking precedence over the narrative to offer us more than the usual dogmatic (European) concerns.

Though the title is simplified to the point of irony, the film has a lot things going on, with Kieslowski on the one hand presenting a moral and humane message (and a visual essay on the ironies of murder and state-funded execution), as well as the depiction of the central character who, as a product of modern alienation is never allowed to stray into the realms of caricature, making the performance of lead actor Miroslaw Baka one that resonates alongside other cinematic depictions of similarly tortured outsiders from films like Taxi Driver and Naked. Added to this, we have the world created by Kieslowski and his technicians that is neither reality nor fantasy, but rather, some in-between living hell, with a continually desolate atmosphere of damp melancholy that few films can equate. Right from the opening scene, the filmmaker paints a portrait of bleaker than bleak squalor, creating a place where children hang cats from drainpipes for kicks, whilst wandering misfits drop rocks from a motorway over-pass, all the while watched by soulless, faceless vessels that peer from the windows of suffocating, claustrophobia-inducing tower-blocks.

The central image of the peripatetic loner drifting from town to town with the weight of the world on his shoulders is a universal one, prevalent in both literature and cinema history, though it is important to note that Kieslowski never allows his character to plumb the depths of melodrama in the way similar anti-heroes might, by denying us of a first-act back-story. This makes the character all the more enigmatic... a broken-down loser burning with inner torment that we cannot understand, until it is too late. The real crux of the story (and the moral centre to both the film and the character) doesn't become clear until mid-way into the second act, in which the director allows for moments of empathy and compassion, whilst simultaneously drawing parallels between the ideas of murder in the name of hate and murder in the name of the law. The two murder scenes that close act one and two respectively are, without question, the most devastating moments of cinema that I can ever recall seeing. The atmosphere that is created by the director and that matter-of-fact frankness in how the action is captured (with honesty and conviction) permeates through the nuances of the actors every expression and allows for the transformation from mere performer, through to the fragmented reflection of a real human being. This makes the prolonging of the violence and the character's painful desperation all the more heartbreaking, because Kieslowski understands his characters, and more importantly, understands his actors. The mood and feeling of an expressionistic viewpoint is further heightened throughout by cinematographer Slavomir Idziak's use of colour, composition and strange approach to focus, as he employs an "optical smudge" over one half of the screen in order to draw the audience's attention to what the filmmaker considers integral to the story at that particular point in time.

The world of A Short Film About Killing is as murky and as troubled as the mind of our protagonist, with a great reliance on the colours, yellow, brown and green. This depressing pallet almost chokes us in the final scenes, when only a few sources of urine-tinged light are allowed to break through the darkness onto the tear-drenched face of the young killer during that amazing dialogue between the murderer and his solicitor towards the film's unflinching climax. However, beneath the drab locations and austere realisation of the text, A Short Film About Killing has a strong emotional undercurrent throughout, though for much of the film it is kept secondary to the central message so as to avoid the kind of clichés rampant in this kind of film. As with the work of other directors from the same social-realist background, Kieslowski doesn't offer the viewer any easy answers - we don't get the last minute pardon, or the spoken word narration heaping forgiveness on the world, or a crescendo of violins to further the melodrama - this filmmaker presents us with a simple story and allows us to come to our own conclusions.

Kieslowski, alongside Bergman, Tarkovsky and a further select few, is one of the all time genius filmmakers, and this is his masterpiece. A shocking work that forces the audience to ask some deep questions without the promise of easy answers. As a result of this, it isn't enough to simply declare it one of the greatest films of the 1980's, as this is a rare film that demonstrates the true potential of cinema as an artistic medium... a film that everyone should experience, at least once.

In Warsaw, the violent sociopath Jacek Lazar (Miroslaw Baka) wanders through the streets committing minor acts of violence. He gets a taxi and kills the driver Waldemar Rekowski (Jan Tesarz) without any reason or motive. Meanwhile, the idealistic Piotr Balicki (Krzysztof Globisz) has just graduated as a lawyer and is assigned to defend Jacek, but loses the case and the youngster is sentence to death.

Capital punishment is a polemic theme, where many people approve or disapprove this sentence. The director Krzysztof Kieslowski uses one of the Ten Commandments, "You Shall not Murder", to defend his position against Death Penalty, no matter whether legally executed by the State in accordance with the laws. The provoking "Krótki Film o Zabijaniu" is a simple and melancholic feature, with depressing colors and no redemption; the performances are top-notch and the murders are extremely violent and dreadful; however Kieslowski manipulates the audiences with the brutal sequence of the execution of Jacek and he is effective in his intent. The story isolates the victim and is focused in the killer, avoiding any sympathy with the wife, relatives and friends of Waldemar. The film never shows the widow of Waldemar and the consequences of his loss to his family. When Piotr is submitted to his final oral test, he says that justice is flawed since Cain but serves as example to avoid similar crimes. In my country there is no Death Penalty, but the present days, where increasing violence is everywhere, with criminals, terrorists and deranged people committing hideous crimes, would the families and friends of the victims agree with this beautiful and poetic position or would prefer the ancient "an eye for an eye"?. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Não Matarás" ("You Shall not Murder")

While not sufficiently short, I did get its sense of killing (in terms of length as well as its content). Its graphic violent scenes are said to be highly effective. While not shocking, they're boring enough to end up as an avoidable drag (if it's the same movie I watched). Apparently, I'm at loss for my shortsightedness to savor this acclaimed masterpiece. All the same, I did find it engaging in parts, and appreciate its uncomplicated storyline. If only it was equally interesting. Hope you face no problems enjoying it to its fullest. I'd barely call this violent, and I'd easily recommend it to the squeamish. The first hour is pretty dull in general, bland character development, meandering pace, and annoying melodramatic music. That said the last 20 minutes is a pretty powerful criticism of the death penalty.

Yes, the filters make the film so dim that I have to decrease my television's colour and brightness. However, Kieslowski marvellously uses filters in order to portray a sinister world in this film. In an interview, Kieslowski says that this film "is not about capital punishment, it's about killing." Any form of killing, according to Kieslowski, is immoral. He condemns Jacek's action as cruel and senseless. Meanwhile, Jacek's personality cannot and should not be defined by the murder he committed. Jacek's goodness flows out when Piotr visited him.

The taxi driver does not deserve to die. But he is not a very good person either. In this film, an average person is not always good. A criminal is not absolutely evil. Neither an individual nor an authority institution has the right to take away someone's life. The only good person in this film is Piotr the lawyer. He has the character of grace that he brought Jacek's dignity back to Jacek.

Overall, "A Short Film about Killing" is one of Kieslowski best in the "Dekalog" series. It is the best film against murder and capital punishment (sorry, "Dead Man Walking" fans).

This is not a pleasant film to watch, but one that will you be absorbed in. We first see a decaying rat in a stream, then a cat that has just been hanged. This is a depressing and desperate location. The film is also shot at times through a filter, which gives it an even more gloomy feel. A young man wanders around aimlessly. His behaviour is malicious. He scares away some pigeons that an old woman is feeding; he shoves a stone of a bridge smashing a car's window below; he pushes a man over for no reason. This is a troubled man; one who has a dangerous chip on his shoulder.

Meanwhile, a taxi driver is shown cleaning his car. He seems to have a nasty streak in him, too. He drives off leaving two passengers behind. He sounds his horn to scare a man with two dogs. Fatefully, he will soon pick up the aimless young man. The killing of the taxi driver is slow and brutal. The old man struggles for his life. The young man then steals the taxi and inexplicably shows it to a young girl, who lives near the taxi driver. The next scene shows him in court and sentenced to death. The other figure featured in the first third of the film is a recently graduated lawyer, who defends the young killer in court. Now the man is in the gallows, awaiting his execution. The lawyer has one last conversation with the doomed man, and we are told of a sad story that, perhaps, may have prevented him from being in the situation. The execution is shown in detail. Kieslowski doesn't hold back in this film. A film that will stay with you for a while after the credits.

What an important film. And a great one it is too, although I prefer 'A Short Film About Love' better because it is less depressing and especially more uplifting at the end. But then what film couldn't be?!

The brutal slaying at the centre of the film is particularly hard to watch and worse than a 100 shootings in a crass American action flick. It is simply 7 horrific (but important) minutes. You will remember this killing throughout the rest of the film and long after the movie has ended. And this is deliberately intentional. As was Kieslowski attempting to make us feel sympathy for the devil (the killer) at the end by a tragic childhood memory. However, it is too little, too late. I felt no sympathy for the killer because I remembered the brutal slaying he committed earlier. You'll still emphathise with him at the end despite his crimes.

I think if you agree with capital punishment then you may change your mind and if you don't it will merely confirm your stance against it. Even though this film is dark and at times horrific it needed to be made and the 3 main cast (the victim, his killer and his lawyer) all deserve credit for their moving performances. Kieslowski, his co-writer, his D.O.P and indeed all the rest of the bit cast and crew should be commended.

I doubt any Polish cinema will come close to this film and the 'Love' film forever more - but I hope Directors at least try to emulate these rightful classics in the future.

Krzysztof Kieslowski's A Short Film About Killing is the Polish director's argument against capital punishment. It is the story of a young man, Jacek Lazar (Miroslaw Baka, perfectly Eastern European), living in a Warsaw tenement. It is also the story of a cheerfully malicious taxi driver (Jan Tesarz), who spends most of his time on the job driving away from potential customers. Oh yeah, and the new-made attorney (Krzysztof Globisz), an avowed opponent of the death penalty, working towards partner status.

The three stories collide, Iñárritu style, when the young man hitches a ride in a certain taxi and ends up murdering the driver in a long, brutal, and fittingly bloody sequence. He steals the taxi, and in the next scene we see him in court, defended by...you guessed it. The trial is left to the audience's imagination, as Jacek is immediately sentenced to death. After a humanization-by-conversation scene with Jacek and his lawyer, Jacek is hanged methodically. In a shot nearly as hard to stomach as the murder of the cab driver, feces drips from Jacek's leg into the container below the gallows.

As a movie, the film works beautifully. Warsaw is made as unwelcome as possible by a use of darkness reminiscent of the iris shots of the silent era; often half the screen is a mysterious, foreboding shroud. The pacing is excellent, slow enough to fit the lofty theme and give the audience time to work out the significance of certain scenes, yet not so slow as to let our minds wander far from the film. The characters are not over-developed, but we learn about them all that we need to know. Even the conversation between Jacek and the lawyer, which could easily have been standard "I don't want to die" nonsense, shows depth and intelligence.

It is as an argument, however, that the film's weaknesses become apparent. The problem is that Kieslowski's film is unlikely to change any minds. Those who are against the death penalty will find it a brilliant portrayal of murder by the authorities, while those who support capital punishment will shrug and say, "He deserved it." There is, after all, ample evidence of premeditation, as when Jacek wraps a rope--one of his murder weapons--around his hand at a café, cutting it to desired length. That the movie was intended to connect the executioner's act with the murderer's is obvious. When Jacek kills the taxi driver, he puts a blanket around his victim's head before bludgeoning it with a rock. The murderer wears a similar hood as he is led to the noose.

But the sheer brutality of the "first" murder distances it from the institutional calmness of the second. Surely Kieslowski was trying to say that murder is murder, no matter how the act is done, or by whom, and that the execution was just as brutal, morally and philosophically, as Jacek's crime. But death penalty supporters are generally not concerned at all with the philosophical and place practical considerations above moral ones. They think: this man is dangerous; he will be a burden to our justice systems; he shall be killed. Most do not think: this man's criminal act gives me the moral right to end his life. Kieslowski says: no institution has the moral right to end a man's life. He does not say: it is impractical to kill this man.

If Kieslowski had made the latter point with his film it would have been a better argument, but it is obvious that the poetry of the movie would be lost. Arguing practicality necessitates a practical film, almost a documentary-style approach. Kieslowski's talent is for imagery and mood and thought-provoking simplicity. Certainly his movie is a better film than an argument, and maybe it's better that way. Leave the practical arguments to the practical artists: the statisticians, pollsters, and attorneys. (It is significant, I think, that, while Jacek's attorney's argument against the death penalty is confirmed by the judge, it is never given to the audience, at least not during the trial.) Perhaps Kieslowski's work will inspire and affirm these more practical men, who may transform his message into something more effective. Then will his movie remain captivating and his argument see indirect results.

In 1985 Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski became acquainted with two men: Zbigniew Preisner and Krzysztof Piesiewicz, both of whom weren't that familiar with film industry. Eventually Kieslowski decided to make his next film No End (1985) with these two men; Piesiewicz as the screenwriter with Kieslowski and Preisner as the score composer. Shortly after the film was released Piesiewicz got an idea to make a film about The Ten Commandments. The idea fascinated Kieslowski but he didn't like the idea to make just a film but to make ten films, each dealing with one commandment. They got their idea working, the Polish television agreed to produce it and Zbigniew Preisner composed a score for each of the episodes. Krzysztof Kieslowski decided to make two theatrical versions of two episodes of The Decalogue (The Ten Commandments); Decalogue five Thou shalt not kill (A Short Film About Killing) and Decalogue six Thou shalt not commit adultery (A Short Film About Love). In each of the episodes of The Decalogue Kieslowski used a different cinematographer and let him to give the film his own visual touch. Decalogue five / A Short Film About Killing was filmed by Slawomir Idziak who also filmed The Double Life of Veronique (1991) and Three Colours: Blue (1993).

Three persons whose lives have no connections with each other are presented to us. A taxi driver, a new lawyer and a young 21-year-old boy Jacek. One day Jacek decides to kill the taxi driver for an unknown reason. After the difficult murder he gets arrested and the new lawyer takes his case. Jacek gets sentenced to death and the lawyer is forced to witness the first death of his client. This same pattern is shown to us in the first pictures we see: a dead rat in the gutter, a hung cat and a group of boys (the society) running away. Kieslowski was always interested in the coincidental events that can change the course of our lives. What kind of a turn happens in life when something unexpected happens? There are some turning points in life when important things happen and important choices are made, which can guide our life. "I believe that there are invisible threads that bond people together. The question is to find those threads." - K. Kieslowski. In his earlier film Blind Chance (1981) he dealt with fate and destiny by showing different variations of the protagonist's life.

The theatrical version is 25 minutes longer than the television version, but the length isn't the only difference between them. In Decalogue five the perspective is the lawyer's and in the film it is the boy's. The episode studies the commandment thou shalt not kill and the film just killing in general. Many have seen it as a film against capital punishment but Kieslowski didn't intend that. Sure he as a humanist is against capital punishment, but the film is a charge against violence in general. It just happened to be that after the film was released capital punishment was a current topic in the Polish media.

To create the repulsive Polish reality the cinematographer Slawomir Idziak got the idea of using colored lens, especially green ones. Green is often supposed to be the color of fresh, new beginning and spring. But when you put them in a camera the world turns into something obnoxious. Kieslowski wanted to show the world which was even uglier than reality. By this technical element Kieslowski was also able to delimit the picture more and delete all the useless things away from it. "Films of today are far too prolix. What isn't necessarily important should be cut out." In addition to the severe aesthetics Kieslowski also took a lot of "useless stuff" away from the storyline. He didn't film the trial of the boy, because it isn't relevant or interesting. "We the people should be interested in people." In his interview book Kieslowski on Kieslowski published by Danusia Stok, Kieslowski says that there were three reasons why he made A Short Film About Killing. The first: death penalty; the fact that someone gets killed by the society of Poland happens in Kieslowski's name because he's a citizen of Poland and he didn't want it to happen. The second reason was that to Kieslowski's mind killing is always wrong, no matter what the reasons were, who got killed and who was the killer. The third reason was that Kieslowski wanted to film the Polish world, which is pretty grim and dull.

The audience never gets to know why the boy kills the taxi driver and that is very relevant. What we do get to know are the reasons of the society which rest on the law, but we don't know the true humane reasons - and won't ever know. The film is about killing but also about loneliness; that profound loneliness in us all. All the characters of the film live alone and can't decide about anyone's fate but their own. It's a tale about loneliness which lives in our society, where people desperately try to get connection with each other. In our western world people quite paradoxically want to get out of the fuss and live in peace, miles away from other people. But at the same most of the people say that the thing they fear the most is loneliness; to be left alone.

A Short Film About Killing is a charge against violence. Capital punishment is the most radical form of violence one can imagine. The film achieves to bond violence and capital punishment, and to resist capital punishment as a form of violence. It is a profound film about loneliness in us all and how small things can change the course of our lives.

A glaring error in a violent scene makes this movie hard to get into. Its stark and cold, but not much else. Pretty fricking bad to say the least. I highly recommend not watching it. This is one of those films where the pace is deliberately kept slow so as to stake it's claim as "artistic." In fact, it's just dull. I was hoping to learn something about Polish criminal procedure, but the film skips the trial entirely. It's basically just an anti-death penalty polemic. I fail to make that connection. There was some trouble with developing or transfer, many of the frames are incredibly dark on one or two sides. Interesting look at the Polish death penalty, unlike the movie, they really didn't waste much time.