Vincent Gallo's strength is his ability to show emotion through his body language and facial expression. As soon as he opens his mouth, he becomes a sub par actor in my opinion. Thankfully Essential Killing plays to Gallo's strength by having him play a character that doesn't have a single line.

Essential Killing is a simple tale of survival that gets a bit muddled because the film poorly uses flashbacks. The majority of the film is just Gallo running around in a winter landscape which is awesome. The interjection of the flashbacks is usually abrupt, and entirely unnecessary because nothing is revealed in the end about the flashbacks. These scenes aren't enough to not recommend the movie, as the majority of Essential Killing is strong film making. However, the flashbacks do affect the pacing of the film enough that I have to knock off a few stars.

I love going into films not knowing too much about them, when a film's good, really good, I think you enjoy it all the more... this isn't one of those films.

I really didn't give a single fuck about the man's plight, he could have lived or died, it really didn't matter, it's just a man walking aimlessly through snow for an hour. As beautiful as that is to look at, you're given absolutely nothing to connect with and therefore any scene where he was close to being found was totally devoid of tension. He could have been caught and brought back to prison or he could have escaped and kept on meandering, it really didn't matter either way.

A total non-event. At least it had some gorgeous collies in it.

I like that they made the good guy a terrorist murderer, that is unusual for films. It is also nice that they hired a homeless man for the lead actor hopefully he could afford to buy a house and some sandwiches afterwards

Why on earth would you employ the indie-actor whom you associate to be at his best when he can brilliantly and funny articulate the strangest of ideas and emotions, to do a silent role as an Afghan pow?

Essential killing – Like Brighton Rock I saw this in a double bill with a vastly superior offering, and I definitely suffered by comparison. (Ken Loach’s Route Irish, the best detective film since Brick.) This is an almost dialogue free affair about a Taliban fighter (Vincent Gallo) captured by the American forces who after being held briefly escapes after his convoy falls foul of a roadside bomb. He then has to survive alone in the cold polish wilderness whilst evading capture. Aside from abject boredom the abiding memory of this film was seeing Vincent Gallo forcing himself onto the teat of an elderly polish peasant at gunpoint. No one wants to see that.

Bizarrely both Route Irish and Essential Killing have scenes of enhanced interrogation techniques, which make them the first and probably last waterboarding double bill I’ll ever see.

Vincent Gallo läuft durch Schnee - das hat mich kalt gelassen (hihähö). Nein, ehrlich, am Ende dachte ich nur: "Hm - so, und nun?". Es ist mal eine andere Art, einen Überlebenskampf zu zeigen, ohne Action, ohne viel Tamtam, was gar nicht so schlecht ist, aber nicht meinen Nerv getroffen hat, zumindest nicht so richtig.

Terroriste qui s'échappe lors d'un transport pour être confronté à la nature, la survie essentielle.

Très beau décor, belles images, réflexion sur la place de l'homme dans la nature, le fanatisme religieux (mangeoire, Marie, ...), cassage des codes.

Scène marquante avec la mère en train d'alléter.

Langatmig und eintönig. Vermittelt Inhalt vom Film dadurch exzellent, aber insgesamt ist es zu wenig um das Interesse des Zuschauers aufrecht zu halten. Verwirrend sind zudem die Rück- resp. Vorblenden, welche nicht einzuordnen sind. Vincent Gallo liefert jedoch eine stumme Glanzperformance. Durchzogen.

With little to no dialogue for the majority of the running time the viewer is instead led through the sparsly structured story with exquisite visuals and Gallos' fraught performance. Certainly not for everyone but I thoroughly enjoyed the ambiguity of the direction and overall story.