Let me start with this - If this movie was American, i would give it 7/10. But since it's Serbian, i can proudly proclaim that this is a first real action movie we ever made that looks good. So, using our standards, i give it 9/10.
- Production, music, sound effects, action scenes, picture, settings...it's all top notch and surprisingly good for our standards. Not really there with Hollywood, but near it.
- Casting was great in most of the cases - Though i think the main role should have gone to a more ''dangerous looking'' actor like Viktor Savic, instead it went to Milos Bikovic - he acted very well but i feel that his portrayal of a criminal is a bit too much romanticized.
- Acting is pretty good, which is expected of a huge number of legends of Serbian cinematography that star in this movie (Especially Srdjan Todorovic and late Nebojsa Glogovac). Acting was always the strongest element of Serbian movies. Younger actors did their job well, though it wasn't anything spectacular. There was a lot of comic lines and moments, in an otherwise serious movie.
- Story is somewhat simple and really isn't the strongest point of the movie. But it's a nice change for us in Serbia to have a movie with a plot that isn't either 1) historical 2)surreal 3)overly pretentious and thus complicated. It's a nice, regular, crime story with some cliche's sprinkled over it and few very open allusions towards inefficiency and corruption of Serbian police and state.
All in all it was a thrilling movie and i enjoyed it a lot. I hope that Juzni Vetar is a taste of things to come in Serbian cinematography. We've milked comedy, tragedy, tragicomedy (especially that), surreality, period dramas and similar genres way too much (i liked them all though). Maybe it's finally time for an age of Serbian crime/action movies that are actually good.
