4 Black Suits (2010) User Reviews

Not worthy

[nikospapadopoulos-949-21381 · 4/10 · 15 March 2014]

It is a boring film....the story is awful.

For about 1.5 hours we are watching 4 guys roaming almost aimlessly, carrying a coffin.

I didn't know any of the actors except renos harlambidis that he is a well known actor in Greece

and of course Giannis zouganelis!

I read same many reviews in fashionlike.gr about this film and all agreed that it is waste of time

We can see many places in Greece and we follow these 4 guys from Piraeus port till viotia

-It has uninteresting and mostly unconvincing characters

Renos haralambidis has not only played on the film but he is the director also

Sound editing is good

Hilarious

[elly-spilio · 8/10 · 23 January 2014]

Aristophanes would love this film. It has layers of meaning mixed with reality and belly laughs. The inspiration is from Odysseus returning to find Elpenor's body, and the character's journey takes the viewer from Piraeus to downtown Athens and through the beautiful Greek countryside. The actors are all top-notch. It's such an unpretentious, natural film with such excellent acting you barely realize you're watching a film. There is homage to the Italian movies of the 60s, in my opinion, yet the movie is very Greek. But you don't have to be Greek to enjoy it! I loved the characters. They could have been stereotypes, but each becomes fleshed out during the journey. Though the filmmaker gives you some backstory on each, I wanted to find out more about them. I usually don't like the word 'heartwarming' or films that are described that way, but unlike many formulaic films this one is heartwarming in a plausible way. In my mind's eye I can see each of the characters as real people in Greece and I can believe they'd they act the way they do.

Wonderful Greek comedy of 4 guys carrying a coffin over a hundred miles

[oh-odette · 9/10 · 1 May 2015]

FOUR BLACK SUITS (2010) The Marx Brothers meet Aristophanes in Renos Haralambidis' hilarious and touching buddy-on the road comedy as four men take the job of wearing dark suits and carrying a coffin from Athens on foot according to the corpse's will to deliver him to his village several hundred kilometers in the countryside in hopes that they will be well paid by his inheritance.

Haralambidis who has written, directed and stars in this engaging odyssey from Athens, then through highways followed by dirt roads, open fields and coastal paths, pulls on the talents of some of Greece's best comic actors with Yannis Zouganelis playing a frustrated Shakespearian actor, Takis Spiridakis playing an ex-con just released from prison and Alkis Panagiotidis, an aging man with a troubled past.

Haralambidis plays Makis, the leader of the group as the son of a funeral company that is going out of business who wants to turn their journey into the "Guinness book of world records for the longest walk in the world with a coffin." But one misadventure after another unfolds as we get to know each character's troubled past, leading Makis to feel he will become "a joke around the cemeteries."

But then a totally engaging spirit of carnival sweeps into their lives as they begin to accept what this journey has given them including an unexpected friendship with, yes, the corpse and his girlfriend of decades before.

If Zorba the Greek (1964) calls on the uplifting power of dancing in the face of disasters, Haralambidis pulls together a group dance sequence that liberates and transforms every character despite all personal misfortunes! Comedy and death have crossed paths before in memorable films such as Mike Newell's Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and Frank Oz's Death At a Funeral (2007), and Haralambidis' Four Black Suits certainly holds its own in such a comic gathering. This is contemporary independent Greek film comedy at its best!