Critics reviews

The political component is marginal; this is a survival story, plain and simple, and in the hands of Polish director Skolimowski, it becomes an exercise in primal, stripped-down storytelling. As Gallo devours ants for sustenance, fends off wild dogs, and re-enacts the finale of The Grapes Of Wrath (minus the consent of the mother), the audience becomes weirdly hardwired to his emotional and physical state, feeling every painful plunge, down the side of a bank or into ice-cold water.

The clarity that Clooney said he missed can be found in spades in Skolimowski’s film, whose clarity has a demonic ineluctibility that is enough to wipe out the vagueness of a dozen movies.

Skolimowski prefers detached austerity, utilizing a starkly expressionistic mise-en-scène that imperceptibly blurs the line between the natural world and its nameless protagonist’s (Vincent Gallo) disordered mindscape.

Poetic, savage and beautifully expressive visually, Essential Killing is an exceptionally rich and powerful cinematographic experience that should not be missed.

While it starts with impressive military details, Essential Killing moves quickly to the narrative minimalism and visual abstraction of Gallo plunging his way through snowy banks.