Number 55 (2014)

There's a version of Number 55 that could've been genuinely devastating. In its opening stretch, you can almost see it. This Croatian war film, based on a true story from the country's independence conflict with Yugoslavia in the early nineties, comes out swinging with a raw, unflinching energy that grabs you by the collar. The practical effects for battlefield injuries are genuinely impressive, the kind of visceral detail that makes you wince and lean forward at the same time. For a little while, I was well and truly in.

Then, somewhere in the middle, it loses its nerve. Or maybe its focus. Either way, it loses me.

The film starts with real momentum, a no-nonsense approach to depicting modern warfare that doesn't bother dressing things up. That's exactly the right call for this kind of subject matter. War films live or die on whether you feel the weight of what's happening on screen, and early on, Number 55 earns that weight. The injuries look real. The chaos feels grounded. I was genuinely invested.

But then the story just sort of... wanders. There's no clean way to put it. The narrative momentum that built up so promisingly in the first act slowly bleeds out, and what you're left with is a film that meanders towards its conclusion without any real urgency or dramatic purpose. Scenes come and go. Things happen. You wait for a point to crystallise, and it never quite does.

What makes it worse is the way the film tries to paper over the cracks. The shakycam is relentless, and not in a good way. It doesn't feel like a considered stylistic choice so much as a crutch, as though throwing the camera around will conjure tension that the script isn't generating on its own. Paired with a near-constant soundtrack of ambient gunfire in the background, it starts to feel cynical. Like the filmmakers knew the middle section was going limp and decided to drown it in noise and motion rather than actually fix it. It's jarring, and after a while it becomes genuinely irritating.

Compare that approach to something like 1917, which also leans on formal technique to create tension, but where every creative decision feels purposeful and earned. The difference is that the craft there serves the story. Here, it feels like it's substituting for one.

I don't want to be too harsh on a film that's clearly made with genuine intent. The Croatian war of independence is not a conflict that gets a huge amount of screen time globally, and telling a true story from it matters. The subject deserves serious treatment, and in patches, it gets it. The opening act is proof that the filmmakers had something real to say and the ability to say it. That makes the collapse in the second half all the more frustrating, because you can see what it was reaching for.

Two stars. A strong start that promised something memorable, and a muddy second half that couldn't deliver on it. Disappointing, honestly, because the bones were there.

Rating: ★★  | Year: 2014  | Watched: 2025-06-07

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