Where Eskimos Live at the IMDb
I picked this DVD up in a charity shop having never heard of
it before. Well, its name starts with a ‘W’ so it must be decent! It does hold
a reasonable 6.7/10 on IMDb, but I felt that was high and I’d be around half marks,
if I was feeling generous.
Bob Hoskins stars as Sharkey, a tough as nails child
trafficker who sports the worst accent since Sean Connery’s Egyptian in ‘Highlander’.
The DVD box says Sharkey is English, but he has an Eastern European twang for
some reason. I wonder if he was dubbed in post, as he doesn’t sound like the
Bob we know and love.
Anyway, Sharkey has a fake UNICEF badge and backpack and is
floating around Bosnia in 1995 looking to pick up some children. His motives
aren’t immediately clear, but we know he has false credentials and is clearly
up to something nefarious. It turns out it’s adoptions he’s facilitating but I
think the subtext is far more noncey. He is pretty rubbish at his job, getting
his papers and stuff taken off him on a regular basis. There is an air of
lawlessness due to the war and Sharkey
is frankly underprepared.
He encounters Vlado who is part of a gang of orphans
straight out of ‘Oliver Twist’. We know he’s a good guy as he befriends a Downs
kid that the others shun. They have almost nothing, but they do have a nice
light up globe on which Vlado points out Norway to his friend. ‘That’s where
eskimos live’- he says. He may be nice but don’t have him as your phone a friend
on ‘Millionaire’!
Vlado’s gang blow up a truck that contains a local Colonel’s
daughter. He is rightfully pissed at this and vows to hunt down Bob and Vlado
who have now joined forces. This minor peril is quickly dealt with, and the
pair bond as they travel across the war-ravaged land with Bob getting some
action along the way in a frankly strange sex scene.
The two eventually make it to Germany where Vlado is to be
handed over to the gang leaders for a potential organ harvest. Will Bob take
the money and walk away? What do you think?!
This was a decent effort, but the multi-nation production showed
through, with a lot of dodgy accents and performances. The central relationship
was poor with the kid playing Vlado being far too ‘stage school’ for my liking.
There were scenes where he was screaming in delight and mugging away as Bob
took polaroids that were just awful.
Bob didn’t convince either as a latter-day child catcher and
his Road to Damascus style conversion didn’t ring true. He did give it his all
however, especially by wearing a comedy style neck brace at the end, after he
was beaten up with a trash can.
The story was pretty sleight too and I thought that the film
must have been based on a true story, but no, this really was the best the
scriptwriters could come up with.
To its credit the film did address some serious issues and the
brutality and horrors of war, such as a big pile of corpses, was well done. Overall,
the film lacked any tension or peril for me, with the cute kid and grumpy Bob
not convincing to any degree, apart as a couple of actors cutting a pay cheque.
Not one that will live long in the memory and one that you
will be able to find in my local charity shop sometime soon!
Best Bit - Bob's Full Bed
'W' Rating 10/23
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