The Story of a God-Father

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)

Here you can see why the best Scorsese films are about three hours long. Sure, it's nonsense to compare the technical and financial resources of Czech cinema with what has always been available to the aforementioned master (not to mention the talent pool of actors!), but the difference is simply abysmal. The premise of The Story of a God-Father isn’t pointless, it could be the base of a story about the criminal activities of the main "hero" and then add supporting pillars embracing both the two different political regimes and the diligent work of police investigators, but the screenplay is a waste of time. It's not that the story doesn't flow easily, because it does, with furious interludes somewhere on the level of a detective TV show that are separated by several years in a flash, and before we can fully realise what a bastard Vedral actually is and what a powerful empire he has built, we are already watching the closing credits. And that's a shame, because Nikolaev knows his craft, and when he has an interesting script, he’s proven he can make something interesting with it. The Story of a God-Father also has a great cast, who unfortunately are imprisoned in their cookie-cutter characters with basically no room for development. That said, it’s reasonably above-par, at least it shows us what our country is like and what kind of people actually run the politics. 70% (06/08/2014)

In terms of Czech cinema, this is top-tier, and on the international stage, it's a solid above-average. I never would have thought that we Czechs could make a quality detective film, especially one based on a real person. We’re good at series in this genre, but films haven't been as successful. I don’t know how much of the film is factual and how much is slightly altered truth, but it was still a gripping watch that I won’t forget anytime soon. I associate Vetchý more with comedic roles, but to play such a convincingly cold person, who’s unafraid to take down almost anyone? That requires real acting talent and a natural gift, because not every top-tier actor could pull that off. He also brought charisma. The film has energy throughout, even if it might not seem that way to everyone. It was necessary to show how Mrázek gradually rose to the top, becoming the boss of the underworld. The police team assigned to take down Mrázek was well-cast, and Vaculík absolutely nailed it. For Czech standards, the brutal scenes were quite intense, but they clearly reminded us that no one should mess with the mafia, and that even an important and high-ranking position in society might not save someone from the long reach of this organization. I’m satisfied—I wasn’t expecting miracles, but I got a lot of bang for my buck. I give it 91%. (10/07/2017)

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)

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)