The plot follows Černak’s return from Germany, where the bus driver originally worked together with his brother as a forest worker. After arriving at his father’s funeral in 1991, however, he soon understood that in Slovakia, in this beginning of wild times, it is much easier to get rich than through hard work.
He took up business with vigor on the border and then beyond the border of the law and did not stop until he became first one of the most powerful mobsters and then the most famous prisoner, with whom, by the way, Šifra consulted his script over the phone and in several personal visits.
However, having the most detailed knowledge resulting both from consultations and from many other researches does not mean being able to write a high-quality screenplay.
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Šifra’s is based too much on the assumption that the audience knows reality well, so it introduces a disproportionate number of characters into the plot, which are not easy to get a good grasp of. He also committed several insufficiently motivated and comprehensible jumps for the less knowledgeable viewer.
The film begins promisingly by depicting the conditions in which the Černák brothers worked in Germany and their return to their homeland.
In this section, the atmosphere of a Slovak village is faithfully and believably captured, the intertwining of relationships between new entrepreneurs, ordinary residents who are beginning to lose themselves in hitherto unknown conditions, and the church, which plays a very important role.
Photo: Cinemart
Milan Ondrík as a typical mobster of the nineties
However, soon not only the script, but also Kroner’s direction begins to suffer from unnecessarily drawn-out scenes with long speeches, arrivals and departures of characters.
Gradually, the film begins to disintegrate into a standard description of what happened during those five years or so, which, given that the film is based on reality, is very predictable, and with the increasing number of corpses (Cernák eventually confessed to fourteen murders) and their liquidations, paradoxically it’s getting a bit boring.
Even the mobster’s emphasis on the family and its safety at all costs, which was a supporting motif in The Godfather, for example, does not have an emotional effect.
Photo: Archive of Rights
Mikuláš Černak
The performance of Milan Ondrík in the title role is clearly enhanced by the film. His charisma is unquestionable, but he only affects teammates and opponents. Ondrík certainly did not create a hero to whom one would keep one’s fingers crossed.
It is still very pleasant to watch him and watch the inner transformation of his character. And the performances of the other actors in the roles of rural mobsters are very good, all the more dangerous the more “uncle” they seem at first glance.
Mário Ondriš’s cinematography tries both to create the atmosphere of the nineties with the help of the set, and to work with the actors’ expressions, and it succeeds in both. On the other hand, Dávid Kollár’s music, which is often unnecessarily instructive, puts too much pressure on the saw.
MIKI is undoubtedly an important film for Slovak society, which shows the roots from which the current conditions in the country grew and which, according to the filmmakers, Slovakia was unable to dig up and remove. For viewers beyond the borders of our neighbors, she is a slightly above-average gangster with very good to excellent acting.
MIKI Slovakia/Czech Republic 2024, 106 min. Directed by: Jakub Kroner, starring: Milan Ondrík, Dušan Cinkota, Gregor Hološka, Rebeka Poláková and others Rating: 60%
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