PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 04/01/05)

Trading the bumper-to-bumper traffic of Los Angeles for a week of wrestling with the congested New York subway system, I'm reminded of the endless pleasures of life underground: the throngs of zombie-like souls tunneling mindlessly beneath the city, the sight of dog-sized rats scuttling along the tracks, the almost egalitarian way the stench of a single urine-soaked homeless person can overtake an entire subway car. On one hand, the Metro system is a marvel of 20th-century engineering; on the other, it's the filthy epicenter of urbanized squalor, the outer circle of Dante's Inferno.

At any rate, the claustrophobic world of a major subway system certainly makes a provocative backdrop for a movie like Kontroll, the Goth/grunge/raverboy nightmare-fantasy that proved a runaway hit in its native Hungary. Location is everything in this atmospheric debut thriller from American-born director Nimród Antal, who haunts the tunnels and platforms of the Budapest metro lines shadowing a team of subway inspection officers. Theirs is a fundamentally absurd profession, their days spent badgering tourists, tramps, gypsies, and punks into showing their transit passes — a classic example of how, like DMV officers and post-office clerks, the more diminished a man's authority, the more he seems to relish the limited power he can exercise over others.

The movie centers on one officer in particular, Bulcsú (Sándor Csányi), who has become so disconnected from the above-ground world that he's taken to sleeping on the subway platforms (like a Vegas casino, the subway system makes it virtually impossible to determine night from day). Our beleaguered hero seems to be slowly going crazy, which makes the semi-surreal goings-on of his underground domain all the more unusual. A random killer has taken to pushing passengers in front of moving trains. A beautiful young love interest steps on to the train dressed in a full-body teddy-bear costume. Is any of this really happening, or is it all in Bulcsú's head?

Antal toys with his audience, alternating between high-energy action sequences, Euro-specific comic montages, and somber stylish asides (a formula no doubt cribbed from such Luc Besson gems as Subway, The Transporter and the Taxi series). Kontroll can't seem to decide whether it's an oppressive Kafkaesque satire, a dystopian love story, or a hyperkinetic action movie. Still, the concoction is striking enough to get me excited about seeing Antal's next project, but not quite visionary enough to rank him among other modern European directors like Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) and Mathieu Kassovitz (La Haine).

—Peter Debruge