The Stranger (Video 2010)

The Stranger: Directed by Robert Lieberman. With Steve Austin, Erica Cerra, Adam Beach, Ron Lea. An FBI agent looks to track down a material witness who is involved in a top-secret investigation.

“I pretty much missed the theatrical release, so I decided to buy this on DVD because I had really high expectations. Well… This is a story about Viktoria a really quiet gypsy girl from the slums of Budapest. She lives with her Brother (played by the Hungarian cult actor Kirstóf Horváth) and his family, I guess. Soon enough she gets fed up with the u0026quot;ghettou0026quot; and her brother and decide to go to Zurich, Switzerland to score big as a prostitute as a last ditch effort… So, the directing is decent enough, the story is OK, the score and music of the movie is rather good, the performances of the main characters are stunning : Zsolt Nagy as Junior the pimp is fantastic, Erika Pölöskeyu0026quot;s performance as Marina the first lady (pimp?) of Junior is haunting, and of course Franciska Farkas is really good (and stunningly beautiful) as Viktoria. There are no other honorable mentions tho. So because of the premise of the movie I expected a really heavy drama, with revelations and character development. Instead of the richness of the subject matter Viktória is a bit shallow on the story telling, we donu0026#39;t get to know her family (?) really well, we donu0026#39;t get to know her brother really well (which is a really big missed out opportunity), we donu0026#39;t get to know her roommate or even Viktoria herself… and so on. The movie does not go into details in general. In one word this is an unsatisfactory movie on many levels if you expect something with some depth and/or gravity.”