Life & Death of a Porno Gang [Blu-ray] [2009] [US Import]

You had better believe the hype on the sleeve as this brilliant film from Serbia crosses boundaries never before seen on film.The nudity and hardcore sex is unexciting due to the overweight and not good looking cast members involved. It must be the first time that beastiality is seen in a mainstream film.Horrors of graphic decapitations in the war scenes may make some viewers look away.There is plenty of humor in this very unusual film about a group of people making a porn film.I was tempted to give it a rating of 5 stars but there were some problems with the bluray disc. The controversial reversible sleeve cover is the same as the non -controversial one .It is said to be a SPECIAL EDITION....for what I do not know. There is a very dreary full length making of documentary and the deleted and extended scenes do not appear on the bluray despite being on the menu.I am waiting for a reply from the distributor regarding this. Worst of all are the English subtitles.In many scenes the subtitles are on the bottom of the screen and then revert to the top.Very annoying as it happens a lot in the early scenes.Your eyes can't keep up with them - one second they are on the bottom and a second later they are on the top then back to the bottom again.Also having white subtitles (they should be yellow) against a light background means that you can't always read them. Someone must be held responsible for this mess.

The Life and Death of a Porno Gang is an undeniably powerful, funny, and hard hitting film that is sure to shake people up quite a bit. It's one of the more surprising films I've seen this year, and, quite honestly, it's one that I think most definitely deserves to be seen. It was made at about the same time as A Serbian Film was and is often compared to it. Honestly, I think the two films are actually very comparable in a lot of ways and they both are essentially saying the same thing, but they both have very different approaches. Lets get what they have in common out of the way first. They are both about pornography and snuff films. They are both are pessimistic and angry films. Both films have an industrial tone and music score and they both feature obscene content. Both of the films explore human corruption. The most important thing that they have in common, however, is that they both have a passionate filmmaker character in them that is willing to transgress morality for the sake of artistic freedom of expression. That's where the comparisons end, however, and this is when it gets tricky to explore the film. The Life and Death of a Porno Gang and A Serbian Film are both comedies and dramas, but the former is more of a comedy while the latter is a drama. Comparing these two films, to me, is as difficult as comparing Pink Flamingos to Funny Games. Pink Flamingos and Funny Games are both films that are, in my opinion, equally detestable and were made by filmmakers who set out to make the worst film that they could possibly make. Both films were made out of passion, the former out of rebellion and the latter as a reaction. John Waters set out to entertain and shock, however, while Michael Haneke set out to horrify and disturb. Now both films are about two completely different things, obviously, and so perhaps this isn't the best example I could be using. Let me put it this way, however. The major difference between The Life and Death of a Porno Gang and A Serbian Film, to me, is that The Life and Death of a Porno Gang is a youth picture and A Serbian Film is a family drama. The horror genre could be applied to either of these films, but I don't think that these films were specifically made for an horror audience. In my opinion A Serbian Film is the better film, and I will explain why further on down in this review, but The Life and Death of a Porno Gang definitely does some essential things a lot better than A Serbian Film. In my opinion, the characters are more likable, the story has a lot more originality, and, in terms of gross-out shock value, The Life and Death of a Porno Gang most definitely has A Serbian Film beat.

Now, time to move on from the fact that this Serbian film happened to have been made at the same time as another Serbian film. The picture starts off sort of like a weird faerie tale. A young artist named Marko wants to break into the business and try to create artistic films that a Serbian audience can get behind and support. The film details his increasingly depraved attempts to break into the world of artistic expression. He eventually becomes an pornographer, but his ideas of artistic pornography end up stopping him dead in his tracks due to the fact that no film executive is remotely interested. He and a gang of eccentrics get together to try and pull off a highly ambitious porno cabaret, but the idea ultimately fails to catch on with a mainstream audience. They are forced to take their idea on the road, eventually getting the opportunity to entertain settlers and farmers from outside the region. Unfortunately, things end up taking a turn for the worse when the threat of the local law enforcement rears it's ugly head. Several fights, heartbreaks, and rapes later, the entire group is right back to where they started, only without even the outside support that gave them the ambition in the first place. Immediately after, Marko dabbles with an outside source who has a history of involvement in filming wartime executions, and he grants him with the possibility of making snuff films for the underground market. The victims are volunteers and their families (some of which are in dire need) would get hefty paychecks for the onscreen bloodshed. The plan works, at least at first. However, all good things are bound to come to an end, and knowing the constant bad luck looming over the head of this porno playhouse, it's a pretty good bet that tragedy is around the corner.

One of the best things about this film is how dizzying it all is. The Life and Death of a Porno Gang is actually a surprisingly overwhelming film due to it's novel worth of plot covered in it's hour and fifty minute run time. It's not a lighthearted film at all, but it's dark subject matter is often always met with a humorous edge. Ultimately this film is as dark a comedy as you'd expect given how much death and destruction takes place over the course of the story. When it all boils down, there is a surprising amount of emotion and ambition here that makes the film itself worthy of multiple viewings. The set-up for the film manages to cram in a serious amount of character development that ends up going a long way. This character, Marko, has a head on his shoulders. He's not a crazy person, he is simply a man who is forced to overcome desperate measures that end up enveloping the overall intention that he aims for. The saddest part about it is that there is an element of dead-humanity that makes the subject matter seem all the more tragic. That's this film's style, however. It is clear to me that director Mladen Djordjevic has a lot of personal problems with Serbian society and is choosing the pornography business as a kind of example. Now I don't know all that much about Serbian pornography, but if I were to guess I would say that it's not an art that many Serbs pride themselves on. To me, this film represents a deeper problem, a more unsubstantial issue that not a lot of people have quite taken the time to mention. The sexual acts in this film often don't seem all that sexual in nature. The most sexual sex scenes in this film either are implied or are shown as overly aggressive. The rest of the sex, whether it be sex with animals, sex with the ground, sexual violence, comes across as what the focus of the sex business in this film entails. I think that these characters don't follow the same ideas of sex as many people do, and that's part of why the picture comes across as quite funny, yet also quite sad. That's also why, when the film gets gory, it's so horrific and tongue-in-cheek. These are acts of violence that the characters are trying to explore in themselves, and not as a means of self-expression. This film makes the clear link to sexuality and political corruption, and in that regard I think that more people will get something out of this film that they didn't out of A Serbian Film.

There's a lot that people can take away from this film, and we can all look at it in our own ways all we want. If you're looking for the kind of film that is legitimately shocking and disgusting that uses it's subject matter in an honest and creative way to explore human relations and corruption, The Life and Death of a Porno Gang is a good one to check out. In my opinion, it's not as good as A Serbian Film. The Life and Death of a Porno Gang may be more disgusting than A Serbian Film, but it is certainly not more disturbing. To me, there is something much more personal and sacred at stake in A Serbian Film that there wasn't in this film. In A Serbian Film there is a level of almost tragic irony at foot that allows the emotions and the anger of the main character to boil and build, and to me it was terrifying to watch because we cared about him and his wife and child a great deal. That film presented the idea of the ultimate victim and how people go to the cinema to see victims be nothing more than victims, and then it presented us with the stone cold reality of a victim who, honestly, did nothing to deserve what happens to him and his family. The pornography business is painted in a much more, given the circumstances, normal light than it is in The Life and Death of a Porno Gang, and while I understand that may not be the more realistic approach in terms of how the Serbian porn industry is, it is an approach that I feel more people can identify with. I prefer my political metaphors and allusions to be subtle and subdued in a way that doesn't draw attention to itself and doesn't force the viewer to examine it's themes, and A Serbian Film didn't do that. Above all, however, The Life and Death of a Porno Gang overstays it's welcome toward the end and goes on a bit too long and slowly starts to get tiresome, something I can say A Serbian Film definitely didn't do. Putting the comparisons aside, however, regardless of my personal opinions and reservations, The Life and Death of a Porno Gang absolutely deserves to be seen and to be talked about due to it's freakish insistence and irreverence for anything sane. It's an exploration of the obscene and the bizarre, and it's a powerful piece of filmmaking.

I had heard that Life and Death of a Porno Gang was as disturbing and controversial as a Serbian Film, except there was more humor and the characters were more likable and relatable. After watching it, I disagree. I did not find the characters relatable and found the movie to be pretty boring overall. I sympathized more with the characters in a Serbian Film, and I thought a Serbian Film was better paced and more sinister. As far as disturbing and controverisal...yes there is homosexual sex but that's barely of note as far as controversy; I've seen that in a mainstream drama and in the Spartacus series. The only thing I found notably unsettling was a very jarring decapitation scene, which was a video within the movie and did not involve any of the characters. I can't say anything very good about the movie.

A lot of ink has been spilled comparing LIFE AND DEATH OF A PORNO GANG to the "other" snuff film themed horror from Serbia "A SERBIAN FILM". While thematically they share some similar ground, both films are about filmmakers and or/actors being pushed economically into do snuff as a way to make a living. But while 'A SERBIAN FILM" exists soul;y for the filmmakers to rape you in your eye sockets until you have seen things you will never forget, no matter how hard you try. PORNO GANG is trying a different approach by giving us interesting characters who learn quickly to care about. The political aspersions of the film are clear from the opening moments and actually drive the narrative forward once again unlike 'A SERBIAN FILM" which plays lip service to the politics of the region as is that is the reason for the films existence. yet it honestly never is, that film never transcended it's brutality and gore for the same of being that way. PORNO GANG, though only likely less extreme (so you get your gang rapes, heads mashed with hammers, gutting, wrist slashing and decapitation as well as donkey scene better left to you imagination) still sticks to your ribs because the violence is happening or being perpetrated by people we have grown to love.

This is not to be confused with a Serbian Film. It is not a sequel but came out about the same time. It's good for a indy film.