Here’s a plot synopsis for you, stop me if you’ve heard it before. This is the story of a young cattle farmer who’s approached by a veterinarian to make a deal with a notorious beef trader. No, haven’t heard it? Didn’t think so. While the not-so-everyday nature of that synopsis may raise your eyebrow, I’m here to tell you the film it describes will do much more.
The film is Bullhead (Rundskop) and you absolutely should run out the door to see it as neither the title nor that pitiful description I just gave gives you any idea as to what to expect. That said, if you can take my word for it, then please do so. Go see the movie and read no further. Because walking into this film knowing only what I’ve told you so far is going to make the experience that much better. Trust me… go.
You’re still here? Don’t trust me enough just yet? Okay, let’s try and convince you a little further.
Bullhead comes from Belgian writer/director Michael R. Roskam making his feature film debut, and as much as the story synopsis I gave you above is true to the story told, it’s lacking in some specific details. I’ll give you a few more, but not too much.
At the center of it all — and for all intents and purposes, the “titular” character of the film — is Jacky Vanmarsenille (Matthias Schoenaerts), a beef trader that injects his cattle with illegal drug hormones. As the story follows Jacky’s dealings in the present day, Jacky’s tumultuous childhood plays just as much a role. Parallels are drawn that you wouldn’t initially expect within a story that’s as much a thinking man’s narrative as it is a kick ass gangster tale.
Schoenaerts is intimidating and powerful in the lead role. Jacky is unpredictable and a brute of a character, but at the same time you’re made to feel compassion and pity for him. That compassion certainly comes from the screenplay and the way Roskam has pieced the narrative together, inter-playing moments from Jacky’s childhood as they give clues to his behavior as an adult, but I don’t want to discount Schoenaerts’s performance, much of which is simply in the way he carries himself.
Jacky’s movements are slow and deliberate. His eyes often seem dead, but there is never a moment you don’t feel a fire could begin burning behind them causing Jacky to destroy everything in his path. The fact we’re able to feel anything for this guy outside of terror is one thing, but the idea that we actually come to understand him is remarkable.
I am, however, only giving attention to one character and performance, primarily because I don’t want to give you any more than is absolutely necessary to get you into the theater. Elsewhere in this film you’ll find a cop murdered, a car stolen, an undercover cop with a secret, wheels that need to be returned and even some dark humor from a pair of Walloon mechanics.
Cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis’ work here is dark, raw and visceral, just right for the material and often affecting as it brings the blunt force trauma of such a masculine movie to heaving life. Bullhead paints a picture of a harsh world, one most of us would cower and hide from, and the fact it’s all based on the hormone mafia underworld is so unexpected it’s brilliant.
What Roskam has created with Bullhead is a film like so many others we’ve seen, but yet so different. It’s a gangster film, but it’s not The Godfather. It’s a crime feature, but it’s not Heat. The closest thing I can think of for comparison in terms of tone and presentation would be Nicolas Winding Refn’s debut feature Pusher and its sequels, and yet that’s not right either.
Roskam has learned from what he has seen and at the same time managed to create a voice of his own. As much as we have celebrated the rise of Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Bronson) in recent history, Bullhead looks like an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of another great up-and-coming international artist and if this is where he starts I can’t wait to see where he ends up.
