Blu-ray Review: The Life and Death of a Porno Gang

Blu-ray Reviews, Reviews

Sometimes marketing works on even the most hardened, cynical film fans. Though I’m not all that hard, or too cynical, I still tend to ignore most marketing campaigns that claim their movie to be “better than” or “more shocking than” another film. When The Life and Death of a Porno Gang boasted that it was “more powerful than A Serbian Film” and “one of the most controversial video releases of the year”, however, I listened and immediately felt the urge to review this movie. In other words, the marketing worked.

Porno Gang, much like A Serbian Film, takes the viewer through the harsh, disgusting, violent world of Serbian pornography. A young film student, Marko (Mihajlo Jovanovic) is desperate to make a feature film. He falls ass-backwards into a job as an adult film director instead, which proves disastrous. He attempts to make artistically driven porno flicks using his boss’ money, and that’s never a good idea. The underworld mafia quickly turns on him, and Marko is forced to flee his hometown.

Marko’s next big idea is to assemble a group of his friends in the porn business to create a traveling “porno cabaret” show. The group takes the road, stopping in small towns, putting on live porn shows for the town’s old men. When the money gets tight, and a creepy old man approaches Marko with a life-changing offer, Porno Gang shows the lengths that some humans will go to make ends meet.

More than any other film I’ve seen – including A Serbian FilmPorno Gang has the ingredients to offend even those people who believe they cannot be offended. There are large amounts of graphic violence, nudity, homosexuality, pornography, drug use, brutality to animals, zoophilia, subtitles, and snuff films. If any of these might offend you, stop reading now, and move on with your life.

To Porno Gang’s credit, the special effects crew did such an amazing job, I genuinely thought I was watching real snuff films, real zoophilia, and real brutality to animals as I sat through the film, and it couldn’t have made me any more uncomfortable. Thankfully, though, this is still a movie with actors, props, and fake blood. Writer and director Mladen Djordjevic had me believing in the unbelievable, which is a feat in itself.

The theme of Porno Gang’s plot is that of escalation. The movie begins lightheartedly as Marko tells of his first love that didn’t work out, and his meeting Una, who he seems destined to be with forever. He goes on to talk about how he fell into a job in the porn business, and of the dilemma he goes through when he wants to make art films, but his boss wants to make money. It’s all very easy for the viewer those first 20-minutes or so.

It’s not until Marko decides to start a live porn show that things start taking a downward spiral, both for the characters in the film, and the audience watching. This is where we see the first spurt of brutality in the form of a fistfight. It, however, is a tame moment compared to what is ahead.

The escalation continues throughout the script, and what results is a major shift in storytelling for the final third of the film. Djordjevic decides to change to much larger gaps in time, which gives the film an episodic feeling as it reaches its final, unnatural climax. This shift in storytelling, though, makes the film feel even longer than it is, and this final third of the film loses all of the nice pacing that had already been established.

Where Djordjevic succeeds is in making this narrative film feel like a documentary, or a peek into the sad life of Serbian porn and snuff filmmaking. He uses a great number of handheld shots, and no dolly or steadicam shots, which is certainly a choice on Djordjevic’s part. He does use tripods at points, but the film is most effective when the audience can feel the cameraman running around a character because it makes us a part of the character’s world, which gets more and more unsettling as the film progresses.

The problem with Porno Gang, though, is that its message is unclear. Why does a viewer put him or herself through two hours of some of the most disgusting and brutal scenes of cinema? This is a question I can’t answer, which is why I cannot recommend Porno Gang as anything more than a test of strength: how far is the viewer willing to go? What are they willing to sit through? This is the litmus test for shock cinema.

Djordjevic and crew have probably succeeded in what they wanted to do: make a film using solid, unknown actors, and make it as gross and realistic as humanly possible. That is great for them, but what it leaves us with is a shell of a film, or a film without meaning. The marketing crew cannot be blamed for focusing on the lengths the film will go to gross out the viewer because there was little else to go on. Porno Gang is only recommended to the most daring viewers who are looking to gross themselves out; everyone else should stay far, far away.

Porno Gang was clearly filmed on a low budget, but the director set out with a clear vision of how he wanted everything to look – grainy – and that is the overwhelming look of the movie. Everything looks as “home video” as it possibly can, while still maintaining a hint of professionalism. That said, this HD transfer is not going to win any awards, but it is perfectly acceptable, and does its specific style quite well. The film maintains the original 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio. The DTS-HD Serbian 2.0 stereo audio option follows suit as acceptable, but not great. Since the film is in Serbian, there are English subtitles, which are perfectly adequate.

One of the main reasons I was excited for this release was because of large amount of special features. I love the new trend of Blu-ray releases putting feature-length documentaries on as a special feature, which is exactly what Synapse Films has done with Porno Gang. Unfortunately, Made in Serbia, a 101-minute documentary on the Serbian adult entertainment industry is severely lacking in information, focus, and ethos. Rarely have I seen a documentary that contained so many obviously staged scenes, from the talks with the Serbian porn actors/actresses to the meetings with the porn directors. Simply put, nearly everything felt staged, which kills a documentary’s credibility. The other issue is that Djordjevic doesn’t know if he wants to tell the story of a man searching for a lost love, a man’s obsession with pornography, share the history of Serbian porn, or give insight into Serbian porn star’s lives. The fact that he includes all four leaves the viewer with an unfocused, unfulfilling, and dull documentary. I admire that this was included, but Made in Serbia is not really worth the effort.

Along with this documentary, there is a 28-minute Making of featurette, which is one of the more interesting special features on the disc. It is in stark contrast to the dark and violent movie that is Porno Gang, but it’s great to find out that it is, in fact, just a movie. The actors are charismatic, funny, odd, and watchable. There are no sit-down interviews with actor’s fawning over each other, but instead this is one person’s view of the action from behind the camera. There is virtually no insight into the theme or meaning of the film, or why certain shots were chosen, but it’s a fun look at what life is like on a set in the most unscripted and spontaneous way possible.

Along with the film’s trailer, there are four deleted/extended scenes. The first one, “Weed of Oblivion from Srem,” is the best because it contains the entire short porn film that Marko directed in the movie. It is reminiscent of the credits in Super 8 where J.J Abrams includes the kids’ homemade zombie movie. Other than that, there is not much worth noting. If everything had been left in this would’ve been well over a two-hour film, though, so it’s definitely good that some things were cut out.

The Life and Death of a Porno Gang is not a terrible movie, but there isn’t a strong enough message to make it worth sitting through the raw, rancid scenes that play out on the screen. The special features, though good on paper, don’t really pan out to add much value to this release. Anyone who has already seen and enjoyed the film might find this Blu-ray worth owning, but the vast majority of everyone else will be happier skipping this release.

Synapse Films presents The Life and Death of a Porno Gang. Written and Directed by: Mladen Djordjevic. Starring: Mihajlo Jovanovic, Ana Acimovic, Predrag Damnjanovic, Srdjan Jovanovic, Ivan Djordjevic, Bojan Zogovic, Natasa Miljus, and Aleksandar Glgoric. Running time: 112 minutes. Rating: Not Rated. Released on Blu-ray: August 14, 2012. Available at Amazon.com.

Branden Chowen is, first and foremost, an actor. He is in his final year of graduate school, where he will (hopefully) soon receive an MFA in acting to compliment his BFA in the art. He spends his free time watching and reviewing movies for Inside Pulse Movies, and We Love Cult. He is also one of the co-hosts for The Drive-In, which is the official podcast of Inside Pulse Movies. He is an avid horror fan, and will spend time watching just about any horror movie that looks interesting. You can contact Branden by email at bchowen[AT]insidepulse[DOT]com, or follow him on Twitter @Psymin1.