Europe Endless - Eastern Europe: Kontroll (Dir Nimród Antal, 1h45m, 2003)
Films set on the Metros, Undergrounds and Subways of the world are nothing particularly new. We can travel via The Taking of Peckham One Two Three, and its remake, 1926's Subway Sadie , The Warriors, Death Line, Metroland, Luc Besson's ultraslick breakthrough Subway (1985), and 2025's liminal horror game adaption, Exit 8. These spaces lend themselves well to romance, to horror, to crime, and this crosses language barriers and nationality. Eastern Europe is no exception, and thus; we travel to Hungary, or rather beneath its capital, Budapest. Here we encounter Nimród Antal, later to direct the so-so Predators (2010) and the gloriously stupid Through the Never in which Metallica engage in The Song Remains the Same -esque hijinks, and his directorial debut, the low-budget Kontroll (2003), depicting the bizarre subterranean life of a rag-tag group of ticket collectors. Hungarian Cinema is something of ...
