北欧人

　　Duke and Yan, two long time rivals, are competing in the world’s most dangerous underground fighting tournament, where powerful crimelords can gamble and influence who they fight, the terrain they fight on and what weapons will be used. In this high-stakes bloodsport where one wrong move can mean certain death, they must decide whether to play by the rules or to cast their honor aside and team up against the dark syndicate running the tournament and bring the entire system down.

　　平静的一天，事业小有成就的中年男子杰米（费尔南多·卡约 Fernando Cayo 饰）和妻子玛尔塔（安娜·瓦格纳 Ana Wagener 饰）、女儿伊莎（曼纽拉·维拉斯 Manuela Vellés 饰）搬入了梦寐以求的大房子内。正当一家人争论晚上该不该一起度过时，三个蒙面歹徒闯入房中。为了保护家人的安全，杰米积极配合，抄下了信用卡号码并交出手机，并随同歹徒的首领外出取钱。他时刻寻找机会报警，却不知自己所面对的是根本不会妥协的冷血恶魔。另一方面，不断有访客扣响杰米家的房门，恐慌的玛尔塔母女则想尽一切办法逃脱，似乎又让一切变得更加糟糕。　　似无止境的长夜，愈加黑暗幽冷……

　　2005年圣节前3天，电子游戏设计员米正在赶制全新游戏－极乐迷宫，准备在圣诞日推出面大量发售．岂料异变突然发生，游戏里的主角苏被病毒感染产生自主意志，厌倦了打打杀杀无限续局的残酷生涯，要求杰米删除游戏程式，另一边厢，电脑集团又派人催促杰米赶快交货，进退维谷的，他只好兵行险著，策动一场网络革命……

　　Set in an underground dungeon inhabited by bundled, ragged human beings, after the nuclear holocaust. The story follows the wanderings of a hero through the situations of survival. People wait for the Ark to arrive and rescue them while their habitat falls apart.　　Delving deep into the dusty and long abandonded vaults of b-cinema in search of lost gems always leaves me with a bittersweet taste. On one hand the discovery of unexpected gems where no one would think them possible is a rewarding experience. On the other hand though it makes one wonder how many of these remarkable low-budget oddities, personal love affairs of directors never quite famous and now all but forgotten, have almost forever slipped from memory?　　n any case what we have here is a little post-apocalyptic gem from Poland that is really better than it has any right to. The dystopian near future of O-BI, O-BA finds a group of survivors of the nuclear war that ravaged the Earth inhabiting an underworld concrete bunker and biding their time as they wait for the mysterious Ark, an air ship of some kind that will come and save them. The Ark proves to be an elaborate hoax, carefully designed to give hope to the malnourished and desperate denizens of the bunker, while in the meantime the dome that separates their miserable existence from the nuclear winter outside is slowly caving in.　　What first striked me about the movie is the design of the bunker and the depiction of the survivors. The survivors are gaunt, filthy and terrible-looking penitents, dressed in rags and aimlessly wandering the neon-lit halls of the bunker like automatons. The bunker is a rundown, seedy place, with bright neon lights peering from all sides like the eyes of malignant beasts.　　On one hand it is a slightly 80's depiction of the dystopian future but the movie never stoops down to MAD MAX cheese. Instead it combines biting political satire with the bleak outlook of a world with no future, black comedy with barbs on apathy, religion and power. The survivors, for example, are fed some kind of flour dropping from a tube that hovers in the air - later on we discover the food supervisor uses books and the Bible itself as filler for this meagre meal. There are many such short symbolic touches, perhaps not life-changing or faith-restoring, yet playful, clever and inspired.　　One thing is for sure; O-BI, O-BA is not your run-of-the-mill sci-fi schlock. It overcomes its modest budget with creativity and has genuine artistic aspirations both from a writing and directing perspective. My opinion is that it should have been filmed in black and white instead of colour though. The director uses atmospheric light and shadow to great effect and it would have registered even better in stark black and white. The blue-green neon on the other hand outstays its welcome after a while. Just a minor gripe in an otherwise solid b-movie with its heart set in all the right places.　　Imagine a less bleak THE ROAD (Cormac McCarthy) being injected with the satire and humour of DR.STRANGELOVE and you're getting there. See it if you can find it.