Laura Erickson interviews Tim Gallagher of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for her radio show. Gallagher, author of The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, was one of the searchers who spied Campephilus principalis in Arkansas. How did such a conspicuous bird escape detection for so long? Gallagher says, "Most birders never get off the boardwalk."

posted: 9:00:58 PM  

Kontroll is the promising feature-length debut by director Nimród Antal, a modern noir set completely in the (literal) underworld of a subway system, one that is like and yet unlike the metropolitan railway of Budapest. Our (typically unlikely) noir hero is Bulcsú (played by the sloe-eyed Sándor Csányi), head of a squad of unarmed railway ticket inspectors who patrol subway cars looking for ticket cheats and other scofflaws.

There are whiffs of American directors in Antal's work: a slow-mo shot of Bulcsú's team of five evokes Reservoir Dogs, and the marriage of the quotidian and the brutal (med techs swapping recipes at a crime scene) is likewise worthy of Tarantino; two cat-and-mouse scenes on subway platforms suggest the paradigmatic scene from John Frankenheimer's The French Connection; a David Lynchian white owl and a girl in a teddy bear costume appear in the depths, leading our protagonist to salvation; Bulcsú addresses a security camera à la Travis Bickle: "What are you staring at?"

But Antal makes the genre his own, with a kinetic chase sequence that reads like a skateboard video game—when was the last time that you were this thrilled by one guy chasing another guy on foot? And the director knows when to show his cards: an especially harrowing underground pastime is only described, so that we can see another version of it later, at the film's climax.

Antal's weakness at this early point in his career is plot (the story's resolution is peremptory), but his strength is the creation of mood and character. Bulcsú's team of comic "losers" are all well-defined, from the feckless new guy Tibi to the explosively narcoleptic Muki. A chase through a subterranean rave is well-managed, and a dream sequence that plants the idea in Bulcsú's mind that the rash of subway jumpers has an evil source is very powerful. The claustrophobic among us cringe.

We never learn exactly what personal demons Bulcsú is running from, exactly why he has sought a life below ground. See the movie for yourself and decide whether that matters.

posted: 8:23:08 PM