Big Bad Wolves

Talk about your hard-hitting films. Big Bad Wolves, an Israeli film about a child-murderer, is not for the squeamish. The main part of the film is a sequence in which the father of a dead girl, thinking he has the killer in custody, tortures him to get the whereabouts of his dead daughter's head. Did I also say that this is a comedy?

In some ways Big Bad Wolves, a film from 2013, reminded me of the Hugh Jackman film Prisoners, which came out the same year. Wolves is far more unstinting. It begins in media res, as cops are "interrogating" a suspect in a series of abductions and murders of young girls (a haunting credit-sequence with children playing hide and seek shows one such abduction).

One cop, a rogue played by Lior Ashkenazi, gets removed from the case after roughing up the suspect (Rotem Keinan) with a phone book. Little does he know that he's being videotaped, and when it goes viral his boss has no choice but to let him go. But, he's also told that a civilian can get away with more than cop, if he isn't caught.

So Ashkenazi continues to trail Keinan, but then a third person enters the picture. He's the girl's father (Tzahi Grad), an ex-military man, and he kidnaps both Keinan and Ashkenazi. He has bought a remote house with a basement that is largely soundproof, to get the information he seeks.

Big Bad Wolves, as the title suggests, is structured after fairy tales, with Keinan as the supposed wolf. The genius of the film, written and directed by Aharon Kashales and Navot Papushado, is that we have no idea of Keinan's guilt or not. Since the film starts mid-investigation, we don't know any of the evidence. Keinan is a Bible teacher, and seems exceedingly mild-mannered, and through repeated torture maintains his innocence. Do they have the wrong man?

But the film is also the blackest of comedies. Mostly this comes when Grad's elderly father (Doval'e Glickman, a star of Israeli sit-coms) shows up. When he discovers what's going on, he wants to help, and there's something both chilling and funny when he asks for a blowtorch.

Again, this film is not for the squeamish. You'll note that Quentin Tarantino calls his the best film of the year--and it's more brutal than the ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs. I laughed out loud while Buddy Holly's "Everday" is playing on the soundtrack while Grad bakes a cake full of sedatives, a very Tarantino-esque touch.

If you like your movies rough and won't pass out as a man's head is cut off with a saw, I highly recommend Big Bad Wolves.