The Story of a God-Father

Actually, I don’t even know why I wanted to watch this movie. When I finally went to see it at the cinema, I just cursed and then some at the end of it, and the atmosphere hasn’t really left me yet. Petr Nikolaev surely filmed the Story of a God-Father Mrázek well and quite professionally. I minded the editing at the beginning. I couldn’t get used to the great number of effects that floated through the movie along with the cuts from one scene to another. But then I got used to it. It calmed down a lot, too. Because there came great acting performances, especially those of Vetchý and Vaculík. In Vaculík’s case, I even felt sorry because since he’s such a charismatic actor I almost never see him in roles like this. His acting was absolutely great in this movie. But as for the story itself, it made me sick to my stomach. Sick and sad. Mainly due to the fact that everything is basically very simple; I can’t actually believe how much. Well, I probably can… (15/11/2013)

The Czech Tony Scott directed the Czech version of American Gangster, and there is a noticeable difference unfortunately in most aspects, maybe except for Vica Kerekes, who’s always good. A shallow film with a bit too much humour and not enough mafia moments, terrible video clip-like music, and an absolute absence of anything seemingly epic. The effort is appreciated, but it’s not groundbreaking. (06/11/2019)

This is technically excellent, dosing the wild nineties in the visual diction of a striking music video, and drags behind itself the most "wannabe" mafia epic ever made here. Ployhar's camera can fly like at a fair, but later you begin to suspect that this is more traditional Czech shallowness, where you don't know if it's lacking a dramaturgist or just money for an extra half hour. (20/05/2014)

After some time, another Czech film that is definitely worth attention appears, because this is something you won't see in cinemas just like that. The fact that someone tried to film something that is still quite controversial (the life of František Mrázek), even though only touching on the subject, is commendable. At least the Czech nation will see what kind of rubbish we have here, since they don't want to read books about it. Ondřej Vetchý was brilliantly chosen for the main role, the other characters remain somewhat in the background, except for Lukáš Vaculík's portrayal. Vica Kerekes can notch another success by sleeping with a Czech star in a film. The almost uselessness of some characters is definitely at least partially erased by the courage with which certain scenes were filmed. The violence is very intense in some places. Go see it, so you know where you live and finally lose all illusions. "The Godfather's Story", "Rubbish" and Czech elections. That tells enough about us. (27/10/2013)

A lot of things are just "wannabes", many of the actors are terrible and there is nothing better than the best part set after the revolution by the end, but Ondřej Vetchý is more than good, the relatively reasonable runtime goes by quick, so why not? Definitely better than Kajínek or Edgemen, but on the other hand it probably didn't take much effort to overcome such poor imitations. (17/05/2014)