H-8...

A disaster movie from Croatia. A quite interesting jewel that unfortunately only a few people have seen around the world. he character description is awesome, the same kind we could find in US disaster films such as AIRPORT series.

This title was very well executed for such a simple concept. The introduction does well to grip the viewer from the start, which helps with the slow pace (which itself isn't a bad thing). The main of the film does well to keep the viewer interested with the many different stories often giving many things to look forward to near the end of the film, and nearing the end of the film gives a lot of last minute surprises that helps lead towards the final scene which doesn't dance around the point any more than it needs to.

As already said in other reviews, one of the things that adds to the charm is there is a lot of topics for a film based in Croatia that have been covered many times before by tons of different Crotatian films, but this film completely avoids even a slight mention of these topics and sticks to the actual aim of the film; to tell a story that has no relevance to what is happening in the country politically.

The most unfortunate thing is that a very few people (outside Croatia) will ever see this film. A thrilling little masterpiece, it has the best chance of being the best movie ever in Croatian poor filmography. Great movie!

Eternal glory to Nikola Tanhofer - died 1998.

This is absolutely one of the greatest Croatian movies and there's no doubt about it. It doesn't slave to any politics, any specific time, any commercialism and nothing of that kind. But this movie achieves to play with the clichees and functionally use them, to show real-blood characters, to maintain the tempo and to build suspense. We need more master pieces like this for 40 years now (except 'Tko pjeva zlo ne misli' and a few other films)

I'm a big fan of the Yugoslav cinematography, it has provided a lot of masterworks throughout the country's short life span. Film making was treated as very important, almost like a vital industry, rather than just craft. Everything was usually on high level, acting, directing, editing, production, so it's not strange that even smaller movies were often quite good.

Knowing that, I was still surprised how excellent H-8 is. Quite original in its story and tone, it almost feels like an episode from The Twilight Zone, way before that show even existed. You are first given the facts, as on a police report, and then you get to see the actual stories of the passengers in the two collided vehicles, filling in the details who performed what action and why.

I can't believe that movie this good was never once mentioned anywhere in the anthologies of the Yugoslav film. I ran into it quite by accident, having no idea that it ever existed. My warm recommendation to anyone!