Nobadi

Karl Markovics’ third film, Nobadi follows a cranky old man (Heinz Trixner’s Robert) as he sets out to bury his beloved dog – with the arduousness of the task eventually leading Robert to hire an Afghani migrant (Borhanulddin Hassan Zadeh’s Adib) to assist. It’s fairly standard stuff that’s employed to predominantly watchable effect by filmmaker Markovics, as the writer/director does a superb job of establishing the two central characters and transforming them into progressively compelling figures – with this vibe certainly heightened by the actors’ impressively strong work here. The deliberateness with which the narrative unfolds, in addition to exacerbating the storyline’s palpable familiarity, does prevent the viewer from wholeheartedly embracing the material, however, while the third act, though impressively unpredictable, contains a bizarre (and entirely needless) emphasis on graphic violence that ensures the whole thing fizzles out quite demonstrably – with the end result a decent yet entirely erratic endeavor that should’ve been either more or less conventional (ie it straddles the line between the two to less-than-consistent effect).

**1/2 out of ****