In The Shadow (Ve stinu) (David Ondricek, 2012): Czech Replic/Slovakia/Poland

Reviewed by Christopher Stull. Viewed at the Metropolitan 4, Santa Barbara Film Festival 2013.

Have you ever watched any CSI? I’m asking you, reader. NCIS? How about Law And Order? If you haven’t, then it must be a pretty nice boulder you’re living under. These shows dominate about a third of TV, right alongside half-hour sitcoms and reality shows. Each cop drama has very similar characters, but they all have a twist on it on the samey formula. Like the coroner (person who cuts open bodies for the police) is the star of the show, or its about the navy police instead of regular police. As you might have guessed at this point In The Shadow is a cop drama movie, and its hook is that its in the Czech Republic, and that’s about it.

In The Shadow follows the story of Captain Hakl (Ivan Trojan), a Czech police detective, as he tries to solve a robbery that soon morphs into a police conspiracy and he very quickly gets kicked off the case as State Security takes over. Hakl continues to investigate despite this and pushes his family and himself to the brink. It all sounds well and good, and looks that way for a while, but after about 30 minutes it all started to look too familiar. It was when Hakl’s family was introduced that the CSI vibe came up, Hakl’s wife is unhappy with their marriage, Hakl is never there for his son. He does try a little bit to fix those problems, but soon a mysterious man with a lot of influence escalates the crimes. When State Security takes over the investigation, the lead officer Zenke (Sebastian Koch) immediately gives off the bad guy vibe. And you would be correct to feel that cause he is, and it is revealed very soon after he is introduced. And Hakl takes it upon himself to prove it, despite the fact that Hakl could lose his job too, cause thats just the hard boiled cop he is.

As the movie progresses Hakl’s family becomes threatened, thus making all of the previous family drama between him and his wife and randomly Zenke, who just so happens to live right next to Hakl, completely moot. This leaves only the investigation, which has been a heady mess from the very beginning. Hakl finds clues and connects dots that are only apparent to him and we get to just watch him figure it out. Barely a word is spoken about the larger picture, and the clues keep pointing to Zenke, who starts to change into a good guy as the story moves forward. Hakl eventually figures out that Zenke is innocent and is actually being blackmailed into changing the facts of the investigation to pin all the blame on the Jews. Because thats what the whole thing was about. This only comes out at the very end, along with the police chief being the one behind it all. To the writers credit, they do make Hakl into a martyr.

Now it may have felt like a law and Order rerun, but I was still invested in the characters. The acting was very believable and the movie stayed true to the post WWII look. I also was ready to love it, having no idea what would happen when I went in. You very rarely get that in an time when you get the whole story of a movie from one trailer. There are some little nits I have to pick. Some of the dialogue and actions of the characters took me out of the experience because it reminded me of things we do today. When Hakl visits his son at a soccer game and the way they go about investigating crime scenes make the whole movie seem like it could have been set in modern time and been exactly the same. I heartily recommend this movie to any crime fan, but not to people looking for a new edgy drama because In the Shadow certainly is not.