Portentous propaganda

Epic sound editing, fadeouts and freeze-frames can't mask the absence of concrete conclusions. Director Petr Jákl's treatment of the controversial case of Jiří Kajínek is slick to a fault, but while it highlights lingering questions about the efforts of the justice system to prosecute the infamous criminal, it fails to deliver a coherent conception of what actually happened that started all the fuss.

After setting box-office records with a blockbuster opening weekend, Kajínek has entered circulation at selected screens with English subtitles. The film is far from boring, but for all its agit-prop ferocity, it is decidedly ill-conceived. Questions about Kajínek's guilt or innocence are sidestepped in the interest of suspense, and plausibility is strained to the breaking point with wild accusations and cockeyed conspiracy theories.

We will probably never know what happened in 1993 when two men were brutally murdered and a third left for dead. Whether Kajínek committed the crimes or collaborated in their execution is an open question, but sufficient doubt about his guilt has prompted renewed interest in the case from international officials and local police. His case received worldwide attention when he escaped from the high-security prison in Mírov in October 2000 and managed to elude police for five weeks before being recaptured.

Konstantin Lavronenko is adequately ominous as the lead, but the role lacks substance in key moments. Lavronenko has presence, to be sure, and he's menacing enough when lurking about Prague's shadowy side streets, but knowing looks are weak stuff in response to direct questions from interrogators, co-conspirators and supporters. Tatiana Vilhelmová plays Kajínek's obsessive lawyer, Pokorová, a character, as the film would have it, who is motivated to defend her client because she's convinced he committed the murders, thus incurring a debt because she believes the victims raped her sister.

Scenes of notorious Czech prisons are riveting enough, but for a story with more than its share of gray areas, the villains and victims are distressingly black and white. Vladimír Dlouhý as a ghoulish plotter is practically laughable as he strokes the noggin of his impish grandson and leers at the objects of his malice. Bogusław Linda is a portrait of rectitude as Pokorová's lover and mentor, despite his own implied involvement in the cover-up of the truth about 1993.

Many of the portraits are borderline libelous, and the closest thing to a final conclusion reached by the film is that the authorities did an astonishingly shoddy job, either in containing evidence of their own complicity in the crimes or in prosecuting them professionally, depending on your point of view. And therein lies the essential problem with Kajínek. It lacks a clear point of view regarding critical aspects of the relevant events.

A recent study postulates that three out of four Czechs believe Kajínek is not guilty. If true, this seems indicative of a simmering level of distrust toward law enforcement and the courts. If nothing else, the film is a potent example of intrinsic corruption in the country at large. Perhaps a faithful re-enactment of history is too much to ask for in this case. As a simple thriller, Kajínek is passably entertaining in parts but hackneyed on the whole, if for no other reason than its lack of action and general muddleheadedness of Jákl and Marek Dobeš's script.

Emerging from the cinema, the uninitiated will be unlikely to feel better informed about the basic facts of the case. In their efforts to draw attention to Kajínek's plight, the filmmakers have done little more than further confuse the issue.

James Walling can be reached at
jwalling@praguepost.com